Publisher's Page: In 2018, just 'Flip the Dog'

By John A. Winters, Publisher

A new year begins. New resolutions, new promises, new …

Which leads me to a verse in Ecclesiastes, verse 9 in chapter 1 to be exact. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

In other words, what goes around …

Back in the 1800s, laws were passed in England forbidding feeding prisoners lobsters as the crustaceans were considered inhumane as food. Now they are so expensive at restaurants you have to ask your waiter what the “market price” is.

We used to beg our parents for new jeans after they got ripped up. We were embarrassed. Now, we spend upwards of $300 to have them “professionally ripped” prior to purchase.

What goes around …

And so a new chapter, or year starts. And from all of us at Winters Media & Publishing, Inc., we hope it will be joyous and prosperous. More importantly, we hope you find your calling for this year and that in all you do, may you be content.

If there is nothing new, then maybe you don’t need new resolutions or a new this or that or just fill in the blank. Maybe what and who you are, are just fine.

Maybe you might try to “just flip the dog.” Some explanation might be in order on that phrase.

Years ago I was a publisher in Alaska at an afternoon newspaper. Well, it was time for the presses to start rolling, and nothing was happening. I went down and noticed several people huddled around one of those old Mac computers.

The problem was every time they tried to print out a page to film, the image was reversed.

If it stayed like that, the entire paper would print backwards. Sort of like trying to read a right-to-left page versus a left-to-right page and flipped on top of that.

And they had tried everything – rebooting, unplugging, rewiring – you get the picture. And nothing worked. And we were seriously past deadline.

And then I noticed the dog.

I don’t know if they still have them, but on the old Macs there was an icon of a dog. Depending on which way the dog was showing – upside down or right side up – determined which way the page would print out.

So I asked about the dog and they explained the above.

And in my brilliance I suggested they flip the dog. And of course everyone immediately told me we couldn’t do that because then the image would come out wrong and that wasn’t the problem and the dog was facing the right way and so on and so on.

So again in my brilliance I ask the simple question: “Isn’t the image coming out the wrong way now?”

And again I’m told how they can’t flip the image because that would be completely backwards and so on and so on.

By this time I’m pretty fed up, and simply say, “just flip the dog.”

So they did. And hit print. And the image came out the right way. And we went to press.

The point, obviously, is what should have happened didn’t. In fact, the only way to get it to work was to do a complete 180.

Sometimes it’s okay to throw out the rules, forget what the experts say, or the way it’s always been done. And in reality, sometimes don’t try to replace it, just hit it from a completely different angle.

So this year, just flip the dog as needed … because what comes around …