Let’s begin by making a distinction between an online newspaper and a newspaper that’s on line. Here in Tucson we can use the Arizona Daily Star as an example of both of these forms.

Azstarnet.com is an online newspaper. It exhibits all the Star’s stories, plus some extra features, but in a form that indexes them by category. There is another version of the Star available that simply reproduces each page of the paper for you to leaf through as you would if it were spread out on the breakfa...

(more...)

Those are not the only reasons that people write, but they are powerful motivators. I don’t believe that many people set out on the grueling task of writing a novel hoping that they will become “mute inglorious Miltons.” They hope to be known; they hope to be read.

And they hope, in the end, that being read they might quit their day jobs and write full time. Writing full time is not an easy row to hoe. It’s  bloody hard work if you’re trying to do it clearly and well and  day after d...

(more...)

Thinking back to the early web world I  remember that there were no blogs, and community on the electronic frontier depended on mail lists. If you wanted to homestead there you depended on e-mail.

During my own tentative journeys on what was then being called the “information super highway” I found that personal web sites were rare. They required a good deal of technical knowledge and most newcomers simply lacked the skills necessary to code and maintain them.

The development of blogging pl...

(more...)