Last evening I had the great pleasure and privilege of being invited to live-tweet from the Media Research Center’s annual Gala here in Washington. I thank Scooter Schaefer and everyone at the MRC for the opportunity to attend, and to share some of the festivities with my readers and followers. It was terrific to catch up with friends and acquaintances, as well as to be in the presence of well-known journalists, commentators, and civil servants, including the redoubtable Charles Krauthammer, who received the William F. Buckley Award, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, and many others. I also had the chance to personally thank the lovely Monica Crowley of Fox News. who was one of the judges for this Top 20 list I somehow managed to land on earlier this year; she even said I was cute, which made me blush like a 13-year-old.
It did not strike me until somewhere around dessert that the reason all of this was happening was because I took a chance, some years ago, and decided to reach out to people I did not actually know through Twitter, a social media platform whose utility for a long time had escaped me. Unlike blogging, where one puts out into the deep not knowing whether anyone will read what one has written, or podcasting where, similarly, one does not know whether anyone will listen to what is recorded, Twitter is designed around the potential for immediate interaction. Merely sending a message on Twitter to another person is no guarantee the recipient will respond, of course. Yet if you have something to say and people like the way you say it, chances are you can not only meet interesting people, but find an audience for what you have to say in a fashion which allows virtually instantaneous opportunities for response and interaction.
The lesson to be learned here however, is something much broader than that of a single new media platform. When you have something you like to do, and are reasonably adept at, whether it is writing and public speaking, cooking and baking, fishing and hunting, etc., if you take a chance and reach out to others with the same interests, the rewards can be quite tangible. I would not have been invited last evening if I had not been demonstrated my ability to craft a collection of words into something which a reasonable number of people enjoy reading on a regular basis.
And because all of this stems from having been a blogger for a number of years now, in the end the people whom I really need to thank are you, my readers. If you did not like what you came across here, you could just as easily be using your limited and valuable reading time to visit someone else’s pages. So a hearty thanks to you, as well, for allowing me to share my thoughts and opinions with you on a regular basis, something for which I am most deeply grateful.
At the MRC Gala catching up with two smart young ladies of my acquaintance
