Here's a link to today's Google News "Most Popular" results. The three on top are, in order, about a bad food, a bad wedding, and a bad medical treatment scandal. One I don't care about and makes no difference to my life, one I already know about and have been aware of for days, and the third is about something that's been going on for years and was ignored by the mainstream media until two enterprising reporters in Washington decided to do something uncharacteristic of many reporters these days: dig and write about something the mainstream missed or ignored or didn't care about or didn't understand or didn't find as spicy as a wedding or as sensational as food that makes people sick.

Note, too, the vast number of more or less identical stories. Some 402 separate journalists or news outlets decided to give us their two cents on a celebrity wedding. How much would I have to pay you to read all 402 versions? How many different ways are there to say Peter Pan may fly through your system with something less than its usual grace?

Now if I may, could I ask you to fix your gaze to my left and upon my desk to see sitting there a copy of the 2007 New England Technology Directory, a product of Mass High Tech, the Journal of New England Technology. There are about 8000 companies listed in it. A rough calculation shows that about, oh, 8000 of them have never made the "Most Popular" top of fold. That's got to be because none of them are doing anything interesting, important, popular, meaningful or entertaining, right? Still, it's a depressing statistic since at least some of them spend a ton of time and money trying to get mainstream media attention. Which brings me to my last question: Why try? Because it feels so good when you stop?

Hopefully, eventually, most people will say they have stopped since there are so many better, new, and efficient ways of reaching the ultimate corporate constituent.

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