Two headlines on the same page of the Herald. Both about following your dreams and the juxtaposition and the contrast is to me at least startling.

Capturing prime position with five related coverage stories and pictures of crowds cheering on Sydney Harbour is the return of Jessica Watson, the nearly 17 year old yachtswoman from Brisbane who has become the youngest person to sail around the globe. The PM, the state Premier and the leader of the Opposition all had quotes in the paper about her achievement.

Jessica herself had this to say according to Herald:

‘I’m going to disagree with the Prime Minister. I don’t consider myself a hero. I’m an ordinary girl who believed in her dream,” she said. ”You don’t have to be someone special, or anyone special to achieve something amazing. You’ve just got to have a dream, believe in it and work hard.”

Nice sentiments and true but the next major headline is of a girl who was murdered after following her dream job — which turned out to be a hoax. It was offered to her by a guy that posed on Facebook as a wildlife worker (her field). There was no fan fare, no VIP comments, no column inches by noted columnists. It contains this from the victim’s brother:

”Nona said if she didn’t go she would lose her job and this job was her dream. So she just went and that was the last time we saw her.

and this warning from police

Detective Inspector Oxford said he did not like social networking sites such as Facebook. ”You are dealing with people you don’t know,” he said

I’m not taking anything away from Jessica. The contrast seems striking to me. Both girls stories about following your dreams. Both girls stories appearing next to each other (at time of posting) on the front page of one of the major broadsheet online with such different degrees of hype. And which one do you think had more hits on it at time of posting? The murdered teen story.

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