Someone told me I should do this again.

Time to re-evaluate.

I started this blog with the idea that it would force me to keep up on reading the news. I had just left college a few months before and college (especially a rural college like I went to) is not conducive to staying informed about the world.  I spent most of my time in class, studying, sleeping, cooking, and dancing. What time was left was usually spent out doors. When I started the blog, I was looking for a job, when I got one (though not in my field) the blog waned. When I got a job in my field, and moved to a new state, the blog pretty much fell off. Now the job starts very early, 5am, and ends in the early afternoon. That does leave me time to write up a little something something should I put the effort in.

But the other thing that has changed is the way news works today. Well, I should say it is still changing. My beloved NYT might switch to a partial subscription service, betting that junkies like me will pay for quality content. I probably would, if the cost is not too great. I mean, I'm not paying for dead trees to be shipped to me, I can't be expected to pay the dead tree price.

Locally, the consensus seems to be that the Chi-Trib is, ah lets say, lacking. The website is the news from a coalition of news outlets (TV, newspaper, radio) with the Trib banner up top as opposed to the TV station's or the radio's. It doesn't help that Chicago politics are foreign and confounding to me, my knowledge of local geography is shaky at best, and out here in the 'burbs it all seems so distant. It can also be said that my heart is still back in the Twin Cities and I just can't get into Chicago period, much less care about the news.

When I started this blog I got most of my news from newspapers on the internet, with some TV on the internet thrown in. I still get most of my news from the internet (hello, blog), but I have diversified. For one, my google reader blog list has grown, leading to more blogs with original news content. Two and three have to do with the way I work. For the first four hours of my day I work by myself, so for the first two hours I listen to Morning Edition on WBEZ. It's a fairly good ratio of local and national/international news, with still-some-what-enigmatic traffic reports ("It's 34 minutes inbound on the Ike.") After my co-workers show up I have time to take a break, drink some tea, and read my Newsweek. I know that Newsweek underwent a dramatic restructuring and layout change recently and there are serious questions about the viability of print news in general, but it works for me. I like the layout with a huge opinion section, page after page of full page text. I like that I can sit, drink my tea, read one or two of those pages full of text and then get back to work.

So when I restart this blog things will be different. I think I might move away from the prescribed topics and just trust that I'll get a balance of national and international, politics and science and other. Local will probably be dropped, it might get picked up again when I move back to the Twin Cities. I might post about books I'm reading because books are awesome. IF a blog has original news content I may very well use it.

I'm still not going to blog about blogs that are blogging about blogs. You can see what blog things I have shared on google over there somewhere in the margins.

Peace,
E.M.