Prologue
“We needed an article on the Greek ferry market, not the geek ferry market!” growled the new publisher of Marine Money. The engineer cum writer had no defense but to invoke higher authority: “The Greeks we will always have among us. God must love Greeks.
Just look at all those ships in the world fleet, so many flying blue and white. But ferries, even Greek ferries, are fewer and geeks are maybe an endangered species once computers figure out how to ‘do it’ themselves. Anyway, I thought you said ‘geek’!” Eccentricity lives at magazines in the DMZ between rewrite time and publishing deadline. The new publisher considered. Geeks were techno-nerds who made incarnate the dreams of high-minded owners and deal-driven bankers. They were the root source of innovation, if not necessarily the instigators or implementers of it. The pages of Marine Money and every other Marine something or other would be the Dead Sea without geeks. So if ponderous, precise geek speak risked boring the readers to death, then so did blithe banker babble proffer the prospect of dying penniless. “We need pages, we’ll run it,” was the discussion ending pronouncement. “Clearly not a cover story, not a headline, maybe not even a byline,” reflected the writer. “But geeks count too, especially wins!”
This is only an excerpt of FERRY ROUTE PROFITABILITY: Geek Speak vs. Banker Babble
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