Blogging

When I began newspapering, in 1972, at the Vineyard Gazette, the news flowed or pottered from the mind of the reporter through a Royal Underwood manual typewriter to yellow paper, from which a Linotype operator in the grungy back shop transformed letters and symbols into lead slugs, which a compositor bound in a page-size steel frame, that the pressman lay on the flat bed of a letter press, and after some earthquake-like shuddering and thundering, ultimately into the hands of a reader. It took a week or so to do it.Now, we blog. If I think of it, I can post it here. If you think of it, you may visit, read it, and reply. It’s the work of an instant, or so.I’m skeptical, naturally, but we’re giving it a try. Over the next few weeks, we’ll invite a wide variety of ordinary humans - Times staffers as well as interesting outsiders - to leave their normal, private lives (and thoughts) behind and blog. Three or four decades ago, none of us was interesting enough to publish our notions on a minute by minute schedule. Now, any of us is. Well, we’ll see. You’ll tell us.