Have you noticed the status of democracy in America versus what we’re seeing in Hong Kong? Over the weekend in Hong Kong, close to 2 million people were in the streets protesting for democracy. 

Also over the weekend, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina officially announced he’s running for governor. While Neuse News had an opportunity to send somebody to cover the announcement, our team decided not to cover the 2020 political races … at this moment.

The reason we’re holding back from the increasingly important 2020 races is because we’ve currently got a special election happening in our own backyard and most of us aren’t even paying attention to that race. We have city elections that are happening later this year and voter turnout will be lucky to hit 13 percent.

Heck, they had a hard time just getting people to file for office. In some areas, elections boards had to extend the registration for people to file for local office.

We live in the most powerful country on Earth where we love to get wrapped up into what President Trump is saying or what President Obama said. But when it comes to actually exercising our right to vote or run for office, Hong Kong has us beat. Ask almost anyone around here and they’ll give you their opinion on abortion, gun control or taxes, yet they don’t get out and vote. 

We should be ashamed we take our rights for granted.

Kudos to the people of Hong Kong. Whether you agree with them or not, the people of Hong Kong are exercising their right to gather peacefully and protest. 

On a completely different note, another thing I want to mention is our Neuse News team has added several superstars lately. Adding these team members reminds me of something I learned a long time ago — you’re a combination of the five people you hang around the most.

As a leader, it’s not as much about me knowing every single thing. I’m not a journalist by trade. My background is in business to business sales and public leadership, so I am adept at communicating with the public. 

But when it comes to journalism, that’s not my skill set. I don’t quite understand all the facets of editorial-ism, grammar and the such. I’m not that great at it. But I’ve surrounded myself with people who are — who know it, who understand photojournalism and who get sports in ways I never could imagine.

And I am just so tickled that Laieke Abebe, Rudy Coggins and Janet Sutton have joined our team. These are journalists some of you have heard of, some of you may not have, but each in their own right are absolute superstars.

We’ve just got a really cool thing going. If you see anything from our team — both on the Magic Mile Media and the Neuse News side of the business — you should recognize that we are constantly going on the offense, because we’re the underdogs.

We’re the underdog in every single thing that we do … until the day we’re not. We’ve just got to trust the process and understand that even though I’m gearing us up to run 100 mph, the total body of work’s success will be a slow progression.

As far as I’m concerned, we’re waking up every day in last place and our job is to try to get content and tell stories for you in whatever capacity that is — in an email or newsletter or online or social. We’re gonna try to do that for you whether it’s through live streaming via our Magic Mile Media platform or through news via Neuse News. 

I’m really excited about the people we’ve got on our team, and also that we’ve got a huge social media summit coming up in October. We have speakers coming from Winston-Salem, Wilmington, Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Greenville. We’ll also have a locals-only panel from Kinston.

The summit is very affordable, too — through the end of August, registration for the summit is only $75.

The whole purpose of the summit is to help small businesses and organizations. Too many businesses and organizations understand there is a free tool called social media (including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter), but they don’t really utilize it. Many times they just post simply because it’s National French Fry Day or whatever and they have no regular social media strategy.

Look, there is very little rhyme or reason to what most organizations use their social media platform for. My goal is to bring some of the best and brightest minds in the state together, so we can learn from each other and network and grow as a community of marketers, business owners and social media managers. Be sure to go check out sm3summit.com. 

And don’t forget to vote. Too many have perished for you to abstain.