lemmings

I have quite a few friends in small town, local media…mostly radio.  I’m begging you to stop embarrassing yourselves with the ridiculous attempt to draw eyeballs to your station websites by rewriting (or worse, copying and pasting) national news.  Your little radio station in Montana is NOT a national news gathering organization…it’s barely a local news gathering organization.

Today was the last straw as you fell all over yourselves to repost the erroneous information reported by CNN that a suspect was in custody for the Boston Marathon bombings.  It’s one thing to just link to the report from Facebook…but that does you no good.  You first have to copy the story on to your website and then link that page to Facebook.  Your soulless corporation cares only about eyeballs on your precious webpages.  I understand…most of you are fine people….compelled by your  boss to post “X” times each week whether you have anything newsworthy or of any interest at all.

Even worse is when you steal local information from one of our legitimate local newsgathering organizations and immediately reguritate it back on to your station website.  I cannot count the times that I have seen a Montana TV station or newspaper post a breaking story on Facebook only to see it appear a few moments later on a local radio station website.  It would be nice if you redirected your listeners/fans back to the original source who actually devoted the manpower and resources into reporting said story.  But, that would leave you shy of your quota of posts and precious web page views.

Please, have some pride and integrity.  Stop being Lemmings.  Stop polluting my Facebook timeline with something I can easily find from its original source.  I want to follow your radio station on Facebook because you are my friend and because I care about the UNIQUE things you actually do at your job.  In fact, I’d rather read what you ate for lunch that day than have you be the 17th source that incorrectly told me that the Boston Bomber was in custody.  I’d rather read two original posts about your radio station a week than a dozen attempts at pretending you are some national news source.  I beg you to knock it off.

Local radio is struggling lately….I remember when stations had parties to celebrate ratings success – now they throw parties to celebrate their online page views.  It’s still possible to do good radio and serve your community.  It’s still possible to connect with people.  Be original, be true, be unique.  Create more and celebrate and share what you create.