You know the old saying that one year in the life of a dog is equal to seven years for its owner?

Well, if people talk about the relative value of "dogs years," is there some kind of corresponding scale for comparing years in ordinary human life with those in digital, online and social-media life? I mean, how old are Apple iPhones? They seem like they have been here forever. Every year on Twitter equals how much time in the real world?

I bring this up because GetReligion turns 13 today. What does it mean when a weblog lasts long enough to become a teen-ager? 

If your evolving team of GetReligionistas has been at this media-criticism thing for 13 years on regular analog calendars, how long is that in "blog years?" By the way, we have published, oh, 10 million words or so of new material here in that amount of time.

Why do we keep doing what we do? (Click here for our "What we do, why we do it" trilogy.)

To be blunt, we still believe that it's impossible to understand real events and trends in the lives of real people living in the real world without taking religion really seriously. We still believe that the more controversial the religion-news story, the more journalists should strive to accurately cover the crucial voices of believers and thinkers on both sides. The word "respect" is crucial in that equation. Ditto for "balance." We believe that doctrine and history matter. We believe that, when in doubt, you should report unto others as you would want others to report unto you. We remain committed to the old-school (as historians would put it) American model of the press.

Trust me, we can go on. And we plan to. After all, the editor of The New York Times recently saidt: "We don't get religion. We don't get the role of religion in people's lives." Who knows what will happen in the next 12 months? 

But as we mark Feb. 2 once again, let me point readers toward a recent essay that ran at the The Common Vision website with this double-decker headline: