Why would a Chinese restaurant need a blog?

Today, with almost seven million people in the  greater Boston area, the Globe circulates less than 200,000 newspapers per day, and steadily declining. Vanguard local radio stations are folding after three or four decades of popular programming, and most teenagers have no idea what an FM signal band is.

A business that approaches its advertizing budget with a 1994 mentality is going to waste time and money.

[...]

“I’m just a small local business, I don’t need a website.”

I hear this all the time and it makes me nuts.  The Internet is killing local businesses and therefore it is bad and therefore we will not discuss it.

Here’s me on a table, with a megaphone:

Attention, Mom and Pop!  The Internet is not your enemy.  It is your knight in shining armor.

Sure, anyone can pop online and get their books from Amazon, their clothes from LL Bean, and their music straight to their iPod from iTunes.  That does change the landscape a bit.   But here’s news:  people still leave their homes.  They still like to eat locally, listen to concerts, look at their wedding invitations before they buy them, and try on dresses before they commit.

What’s more?  People like community.  They like to shop.  They like to do noble things with their dollars, and they like to buy from people they like.

Enter Internet.

[...]

Ellie Schoenberger and her family

On an average day, Ellie Schoenberger gets a lot of e-mails.  She gets them from friends and family, she gets them from her blog, she gets them from her Etsy shop, where Schoenberger sells her original handmade jewelry.

One day, she got an e-mail from a reporter at USA Today.

“I’m doing a story on mothers who are alcoholics,” the reporter wrote.  “I was wondering whether you would speak to me?”

The reporter had found Ellie through her blog, Shining Stones.  Ellie is a jewelry maker and recovering alcoholic and her blog is a place where she talks about both passions.

The next thing Schoenberger knew, she, her story, and her blog were featured in USA Today’s print and Internet versions.

In professional parlance, that’s what we call “working it.”

[...]

It always interests me when we expect the government to enforce ethics, as with the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to police product reviews.

So I am entertained by this twist of events, where the media did in fact enforce ethics, but in a completely unexpected way — that supports the idea that blogs are a double-edged sword.  You can say anything you want, and lots of people will read it.  And they can say anything they want, back.

Can you lie on your blog?  Sure.

But be careful.