Hello and welcome

Well, I'm trying it again.

A few years ago I had an environmental blog called The Thin Green Line. It became very time-consuming and eventually, I dropped it.

The idea behind this is to try something different.

Notably, shorter. (Although I will probably include environmental subjects.)

As anyone who has been following this newspaper business knows, space in the paper is not what it once was.

And although space on the Internet is theoretically limitless, experience has taught me that, what with templates, oversight and ranking, that space on The Mercury web site is not.

As you might expect, a lot of information crosses my desk on a regular basis and, as you also might expect, not all of it gets in the paper or on the web site for the reasons I've just explained.

So, this experiment is to see if I can't give some of those orphaned press releases, announcements and overheard tid-bits some exposure on space I (nominally) control.

The theory here is not a new one.

In the old days when newspapers had lots of space "Reporter's Notebooks" were common formats for bits and pieces of info. Sometimes a notebook featured a reporter's take on news or an event, sometimes, just things heard around city hall, that sort of thing.

This blog, if it works the way I've envisioned it, will be much like that, but a digital version.

And, given my company's focus on all things digital -- if you didn't know, "Digital First" is not only our motto, our CEO's blog title and the name of the new management company that runs it all -- it seemed prudent to also include stuff about our digital efforts.

So that's it. Stay tuned. And if you sent me something and are wondering what happened to it, you might want to check this blog before you call me up to yell at me.