News Story of the Century isn't inside their smoke-filled rooms, its "outside", in OUR smoke-filled world ...

If money-losing newspapers were serious about cutting costs and adjusting to new realities, they ditch all of their national legislative bureaus and engage much more seriously in citizen journalism.

Because this is a new century, not the 20th century, one where the non-actions of  most political parties in national legislatures are of less and less interest to the public, as party membership numbers and voter turnout proves.

In the nineteenth century, the most important government for your day-to-day life was undoubtably your local government - so newspapers were overwhelming local in readership and focused on City Hall.

The only exceptions were the few large imperialistic and globally minded nations - the UK above all - this is reflected in the fact that The Times of London wrote about the world and all the world's elites felt they had to read it, to remain in the elite.

But by the time of the Great Depression , it was clear that the big decisions  about whether your husband found work or your son went off to war weren't going to be coming from City Hall or from the League of Nations.

Instead, a few people, meeting in smoke-filled legislative back rooms in national capitols, would decide all that for you.

Suddenly, newspapers needed to have a reporter or press bureau in national capitols to be credible back home and newspapers in capitol cities became de facto national papers. Columnists in national capitals sprang up to digest the latest rumour from the legislature and warn us what it could mean.

Important, real, journalism was reduced to a handful of people reporting on a doings of a handful of people, for the second-hand eyes of millions of readers.

But that is just soooooooooo yesterday !

Like get serious, papa, do you expect any twenty something to expect that the rantings and the no-nothings of a bunch of dudes and dudettes in London, Washington or Sydney Australia to make a diddley squat bit of difference ?

Like global warming is  G L O B A L  -  I guess I have to spell that out to you.

Global as in its happening at least as much in the South Georgia Islands (pop 30) as in Tokyo (pop 30 million) ---- there are no smoked filled rooms inside this story - its all about "the outside" , outside and all over the globe.

There are no more exclusives on this story: in fact we have all, ALL, turned into involuntary pheonologists , all 6.7 billion of us.

Phenology is the study, usually by amateurs, and most powerfully by many people over long periods of time, of periodic events in the lives of plants and animals, usually related to temperature events.

As in, "fifty years ago, mayflowers usually came up in the first weekend in May, but now they come up in the third week of April, usually."

We are almost all involuntary and informal phenologists because most of us don't keep any records of our observations - let alone long term consistent written records.

Nevertheless billions of us - with our own eyeballs - have seen changes in our own backyards and no pseudo member of the British House of Lords, banging away behind a computer terminal in an airtight room, is going to convince us otherwise.

But he is doing a bang-up job convincing newspaper editors - still twentieth-century-oriented like himself - who also work in airtight rooms, and who are also still fixated on by the goings on in legislative capitols.

Meanwhile the really big story of the century is happening outside.

It can only be adequately covered by a new kind of journalism - a 21st century style of journalism - PUNK Journalism - "three cords and a (broad) band".

Not just 24 hour world wide broadcasters who broadcast from just one location with just one point of view.

No, it must be a vast, thick, net of reporting, from all over the globe (South Georgia Islands included) in all 24 time zones.

"The whole world - talking to the whole world".

Google Translation is getting better and better and this free service is making it possible for global blogcasters,in all the languages of the world ,to basically communicate with each other, without having to first learn English.

Yes "global" blogcasters : people who see their primary readers as all over the world, not just in their local community or nation. People eager to re-blogcast (via links) (and analysis) new events from all over the world.

Its new, its exciting, its important and I am proud to be part of it......