Monday, August 11, 2003

BONG Bulletin is a blog! I have just discovered that an old friend of green-eyeshaded newspaper copyeditors made it to the blogosphere a few months ago, where he is presumably doing a land office business in plain and fancy memorabilia from the Chagrin Falls Commercial Scimitar. Charley Stough started his Burned Out Newspapermen's Guild Bulletin back when editors would never replace "men" with "persons" in the name of such an organization. But times change. The BONG Bull may have been the first "e-zine" I ever read, since (if I remember correctly) it was delivered on a national newswire as a "for editors only" memo before many people had e-mail. Luckily, I was pounding away at an ATEX or SII Coyote editing terminal at the time, so I got to chuckle over unlucky reporters who made worse mistakes than I did, or envy the latest proud inductees into the "Occult Hand Society." Charley switched to e-mail years ago, and I hadn't even noticed the additional blog address in the last few editions. He also moved from Dayton to San Antonio without exactly retiring... and appears to be living happily ever after. With weblogs broadening the population engaged in somewhat journalistic activities, maybe more of the world is ready for the BONG blog. Hmmm... I wonder if Charley can print up some Chagrin Falls Commercial Scimitar green eyeshades. You won't get anything like that from Jim Romenesko or his obscure store. 2:56:00 PM     Antitobacco Trend Has Reached Europe. On Jan. 1, Ireland is expected to become the first European country to ban an indoor tradition. By Lizette Alvarez. [New York Times: NYT HomePage] That shift in temperature is hell freezing over. That howl in the distance is a dog being bitten by a man. That subtle change in lighting is the moon turning blue. As an Irish music (and Guinness) fan who has been kept away from the pub-music scene by the clouds of smoke, I'll be shopping for Aer Lingus tickets if this story comes true! I can't think of better news to use as my first test of this weblog's RSS (Really Simple Syndication) connection to link to news soures. As a bonus, if I understand the system, readers who bookmark this story directly through the Times, like this, will find the story fades into the pay-as-you-go archives after a while, but my weblog's Userland-affiliated RSS link on the headline above should keep working. I look forward to drinking a smoke-free toast in Dublin in memory of my Dad, whose initials were, coincidentally, R.S.S., and my Mom, who got me interested in Irish music. Both my parents might have been online with us today if the restaurants where they worked hadn't been part of the cigarette culture. (They'd also be very proud to see me at Harvard so soon after finishing the Ph.D., even if the Harvard connection is just another piece of my endless romance with college campuses and software... no paycheck or diploma involved.) The Harvard weblog is an opportunity to learn the differences between Radio Userland, the weblogging system I use to do this blue page from my laptop, and Userland's Manila, the system that is installed on Harvard's server. I'll try to avoid redundancy as I get settled into this two-blog arrangement. 11:10:24 AM

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