Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

I was thinking today. Scary, right?

I was thinking about what it would have been like to be the town crier way back when. The bearer of news, both good and bad, for the people of your town. Now he was really a 'citizen journalist', to use a popular phrase. Walking the beat, ringing the bell, shouting out the days news:

"Stanford upsets No. 2 USC 24-23; king declares rematch."
"Monks protest in Myanmar; Marco Polo commissioned to find Burma."
"Halo 3 released; X-BOX 360 found guilty of witchcraft and burned at the stake."

Now those are some headlines.

These guys probably also brought bad news, too. Like something along the lines of:

"King raises taxes, again; removes all tomatoes from kingdom."

and

"Scurvy ravages town; tomato crop returned to townspeople; king takes annual bath."

These guys were protected by the law. Heckling the crier was a crime. Hurting him or her (they were often women) was an act of treason against the local monarch.

Do we afford this kind of protection to our journalists nowadays? Something to ponder. Yes, and no, I would say. But that's for another blog post.

We have come a long way since the days of the town crier. Someone will invent a brand new way of delivering news, and that person should be you.

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