Old news
A brief introduction to my new Yukon news aggregation experiment, The Alpine.
It’s tough to stay up to date with the news and events in a small community like Whitehorse. There are multiple sources of information that you need to henpeck constantly if you want to maintain even a modicum of awareness. For example, here are the ones I track:
There may even be more I’m unaware of.
There are several problems in my approach to consuming local news and information. In particular:
There are many disparate sources online to consume news and information about my community.
None of the sources available are anywhere near comprehensive in terms of coverage.
There are information and news redundancies between the sources.
Most sources are awash in unnecessary fluff and eye candy that distracts from meaningful content.
On national and international levels, there are popular news aggregators like Google News and Apple News. That makes it easier to maintain a more comprehensive view of national and international events. There is no such thing for small communities.
With this in mind, I began an experiment this week. I call it The Alpine. It’s a simple Yukon news aggregator newsletter. I gave it that name as a metaphor for the high level, long-range view I’m going for in collecting news from my community each day.
I hope you’ll take a look and subscribe. I’m interested to hear any feedback you might have about it. Like I said, it’s an experiment.
The grey zone between communications and marketing
It's the difference between simply delivering information and expressing a value.
I often think about the difference between communications and marketing.
Communications is transactional. It’s simply the delivery of objective information with the simple intent to share. Marketing, on the other hand, expresses value. It’s the delivery of subjective information with the intention to influence or motivate.
Of course, there’s no clear delineation between the two. Communications and marketing exist together in a grey zone of practice. There is that middle zone where simply transferring information is the intent, but the information is coloured with influence. Take these three sentences:
I grew a strawberry.
I grew a juicy, delicious strawberry.
You would love this strawberry I grew.
The first sentence is pure communications. It simply states that I did something.
The second sentence bridges communications and marketing. It seeks to influence the reader’s perception of the strawberry by establishing its value. I want you to know that the strawberries I grow taste good. Adjectives are the gateway to marketing.
The third sentence is clear marketing. It suggests that the strawberry I grew has such value that you’ll want it. By involving you as the subject of this sentence, I want to inspire you to take action on this strawberry.
There is very little pure communication. When we prepare information we are challenged to restrain ourselves from expressing value. Instead, most of what would be considered “communications” exists in the grey zone. And, more often than not, marketing prevails.