The Hardest Thing

Being an entrepreneur is the hardest thing I have ever done. Learning new web design skills has been easy, think up stories has been okay, but getting started and doing it is difficult. I can think of plenty of rationalizations -- it's very cold at the moment, I'm naturally shy, the website isn't ready yet -- but I know they're just rationalizations because I have done journalism before and I know that it's a wonderful, exciting thing to do. But it's making the call, it's schlepping down to city hall to interview people and taking a bunch of pictures of Rutland for stock purposes that seperates the journalist from the blogger.  My journalism teachers would have torn me apart over being too sheepish and did on occasion.

Doing journalism in Rutland ought to be easier than in Amherst because I've grown up with this city, I went to school with the daughter of a previous mayor and both children of the current treasurer and my Mom, my Dad and my sister are all fairly active in the community. Everyone in this community ought to recognize my last name even if they don't recognize me or The Rutland Advocate. On top of that, I know from personal experience that Vermonters are friendly people and Vermont politicians are much more accesible than in many other states -- I know because I've tried to talk to Massachusetts legislators and been very unsucssesful when it's not near an election. Massachusetts PR people have blown me off wheras I could ring up Pat Leahy or Bernie Sanders' staff and arrange an interview with a spokesperson at least if not the senator himself.

I've also been thinking about branding a bit more than I usually have, which is not at all. I've always regarded advertising and marketing as something to be contemplated in theory (i.e. the techniques used to build brand loyalty and make things attractive to buy), but ignored in practice (I don't care that they put the most expensive stuff in a supermarket on the top shelf because men will be more attracted to it and spend more, I can't afford it anyways). Fortunately, it turns out that identities are created in opposition to something and The Advocate is very much in opposition to The Rutland Herald, with its slowness and mistakes. It was founded in 1794 and has been the main newspaper of Rutland ever since and it is every inch a dinosaur and is very wrapped up in the "establishment" around here, which The Advocate won't be. For a locally owned newspaper, I'd estimate that around 70 percent of their daily content is off the AP wire and they are one of the reasons for the perception that "Nothing happens in Rutland" because they don't bother to publish any of it. In fact, I think I might make that The Advocate's motto: "Something's going on in Rutland."