After more than 70 years, Clark Kent quit this fall. He left his longtime gig as a reporter for the Daily Planet to—what else?—become a full-time blogger. Clark Drudge? Perez Kent? They just don’t have the same ring to it.

After more than 80 years, Newsweek quit in October. The Time magazine rival couldn’t survive its two-year experiment with Tina Brown and the Daily Beast and is going digital-only next year behind a pay wall. And, quite frankly, from what I’ve seen, it’s probably best it’s behind some kind of wall.

Even voting now has become less an exercise in punching holes and drawing a curtain closed. My wife mailed her ballot in weeks ahead of time, and I stepped up to a touchscreen and voted as if it were some new level of Angry Birds.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not rebelling against this incessant tech creep because my three-month-old iPad became obsolete after a few months. Or because I’m struggling with the early part of my forties. Or because I’ve spent my whole career working in print.

Actually, I’m not rebelling at all. I do all right for an older cat (a word I actually had to define for my oldest daughter at parent-teacher conferences this year). I do a lot of my writing from that self-same iPad. I’ve been blogging myself for a few years now (which makes Superman’s alter ego seem hopelessly behind the times).

I don’t need to tell you about technology. From what I’ve seen, the broker community has done a remarkable job adapting to a rapidly shifting environment and managed to keep up with the carriers and their clients—and actually stay ahead of the regulators. I’ve seen lot of it first-hand: I still remember sorting through ballots by hand for our first Readers Choice issue only eight years ago—because we received them all by fax.

In fact, as we reported a few weeks back, it’s the providers who are really lagging in the high-tech transformation of health care. Consumers are more than ready to do anything and everything online, from ticking through their voluntary options at work to scrolling through the results of their latest blood test. It’s everyone else who needs to catch up.

I bring this all up by way of reinforcing my belief that brokers have weathered plenty of storms over the years. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act isn’t our first real challenge. And it certainly won’t be our last. And no matter who we elect this year, the law (or at least chunks of it) will still be here. We just need to find—or make—our own place within it.

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Working in a brave new world

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