After a three-year hiatus, I am once again writing a personal blog. I gave it up after I began my current job at an international television news network, because of rather stringent social media policies that greatly restrict what I can write. Essentially, I'm strongly discouraged from writing opinion pieces or anything that takes a stand on a topic in the news, particularly involving political and commercial interests. The reasons for this make perfect sense to me: a news organization's credibility is defined by its employees, and maintaining impartiality on matters of public interest is difficult, if not impossible, when one of said organization's journalists uses the internet to broadcast his or her biases to a potential audience of billions.
I flatter myself by suggesting any more than a few dozen people will ever read this or any other post I make, but I can assure you there are people working feverishly at the various media blogs and watchdogs who would make a minor celebrity out of me if a controversial post I wrote was linked back to my employer in any tangential fashion. Also, I would be out of a job and unable to buy more Dr Pepper.
There are several things I want to try here, and I cordially invite you along for my experiment. My intended audience is my circle of friends and acquaintances as they are the only ones to whom I will make any sort of marketing attempt regarding my writings. I will avoid boring tales of my uninteresting personal life; you have my pledge that I will never use this blog to whine and vent about work or the weather or anything else; and I can assure you I will not post any political writings whatsoever. That said, any opinions expressed here are my own and not those of my employer. If you don't know who that is, good.
Finally, I will not be allowing comments on my blog. A primary reason I killed the previous incarnation of this blog in 2010 was a number of harassing comments posted on here by an anonymous person who somehow knew a great deal of personal details about me. Perhaps just as important is the nature of online comments in general; nowhere will you find more vitriol, racism, bigotry and uncensored obscenity than the comments section of any page on the internet. Unmoderated, anonymous user comments have added nothing positive to anything, anywhere, at any time in the entire history of the web.
If you have something to say about what I wrote, please feel free to contact me on Facebook. Don't know who I am? Then please feel free to direct any and all comments to the nearest brick wall. Otherwise, you can f*** off.
