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I started a website with a 'blog' page in early November 2000, which I remember because I missed the Ramble at Fairchild Tropical Garden that weekend, putting it together, and because just about that time we discovered that the results of the presidential election were in doubt -- and would be for several weeks. Most of the first postings were about that election and the legal and political wranglings around the Florida results. I also posted a page of links about it, which I still get asked for at times (I have found a copy of that page but haven't posted it since all the links are out of date). The original Web site and 'blog' are gone now, since I changed Web providers last winter. The blog was converted to a Blogspot blog in August 2002.

Not much to report here, except that I have added some new news researcher blog links to the NewsliBlog 's sidebar. And, for those of you reading the 1968 recaps and wanting a chronological version, I've taken all the blog postings so far and put them on the website: 40 Years Ago: 1968 . I'll copy the upcoming posts there, too, as they're published to the blog. There's a lot more to remember about 1968.

I hadn't seen the new Miami Herald website until I noticed a mention at South Florida Daily Blog . Yep, the site is easier to navigate for sure, much closer to what seems to becoming the standard site layout for newspaper front pages, rather like the NY Times. Says Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal, about the makeover and the site : Online readers of MiamiHerald.com have skyrocketed in the past year, making this the leading website for news and information in South Florida... So, my question is, is the Herald online readership 'skyrocketing' because of the content and layout, or is it because in the last couple years bloggers like Rick of South Florida Daily Blog have been heavily linking to the best stories that readers might not have found -- or looked for -- on the site on their own?

On the journalism front, there's a little flurry of discussion over how news organizations need to rebuild themselves, leading to this memo from Tampa Tribune editor Janet Coats on the plans for an 'interactive newsroom' joining the newspaper, online and television news processes. Last week, lots of bloggers and commenters reacted to a posting by Tampa intern Jessica DaSilva, "It's worth fighting for" , quoting Coats' talk with newsroom staffers. Lots of the comments here were negative (sample:) Wow, you really are young and naive, aren’t you? Someone sent me the link to your blog, and I almost had to laugh, it was so ridiculous. I’m truly amazed that in one of your other posts, you can tell reporters to stop whining and do something about their situation. What, praytell, young lady, would you like them to do? This lead to Ryan Sholin's posting, Declare your independence from the curmudgeon tribe . Hmm. It's hard all around, and on some of these ...

Joel Achenbach is watching the blogs who claim to get the news the 'mainstream media' don't: News we remembered to report . And, in a later posting, down near the bottom of this roundup , Joel links to a Blogoland comment on blogger Glenn Reynolds' brag about 'better than mainstream media' reporting on Iraq, which links to: A New York Times story expanded upon by a blog A straight ABC News report (twice) A straight Reuters story A straight Knight-Ridder story The New Republic’s Iraq’d blog A link to USAid’s website A link to Iraq the Model commenting on some local newspaper accounts an L.A. Times story examined by a blog a Seattle Post-Intelligencer story examined by a blog A straight AP report a New Zealand newspaper story examined by a blog A link to a round-up of Iraq blogs A link to the WMD- Intelligence Commission report A link to some sort of ID bracelet/donation site A link on “ways to support the troops” A link to an Iraq toy drive Blogoland's comm...

The question of journalists and blogging has been debated for years, and I've linked to lots and lots of stuff on the topic. There's so much now that I don't usually link to it, but once in awhile I notice something that stands out. Today, it's a posting by Roy Greenslade, Why journalists must learn the values of the blogging revolution . He raises some interesting ideas: I have tended to predict that future news organisations will consist of a small hub of "professional journalists" at the centre with bloggers (aka amateur journalists/citizen journalists) on the periphery. In other words, us pros will still run the show. I'm altogether less certain about that model now. First, I wonder whether us pros are as valuable as we think. Second, and more fundamentally, I wonder whether a "news organisation" is as perfect a model as we might think. On a related note, I noticed another journalist/blogger spat going on in Asheville NC, where a local blogge...

It's becoming a given that if someone writes a news story that contains an error, bloggers will draw attention to it. Here's one in the New York Times that has Tennessee a'twitter: 36 Hours in Knoxville in the Sunday Travel section. It starts out: KNOXVILLE is often called “the couch” by the people who live there. Problem is, no one in Knoxville ever heard that before. And the Tennessee bloggers are letting the Times know. The story is all over the 'net since Nashville's Knoxville's Instapundit, probably the most read blog, posted it. (Thanks for the reader comment. Brain fade.) Lots of links on Michael Silence's blog at the Knoxville News, including a letter Silence sent to the Times' Public Editor . Lots on Jack Lail's blog too. The story was number one on the Times list of most-blogged stories. Now I've added another.

Lots of buzz about "Off the Bus" blogger Mayhill Fowler (see previous post ), after a profile in the Los Angeles Times and a Howard Kurtz column in the Washington Post . Oh, and a New York Times profile too. This woman has taken amateur journalism to a whole new level. Good for her. Over at BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis discusses Mayhill 's stories, too, and some comments he got about her and whether she should have identified herself as a journalist. But he is more concerned that in some of the comments, people who were obviously journalists didn't identify themselves as such, and sees a worrisome trend here. Certainly something I've noticed, especially in blogs discussing media, like Bob Norman's Daily Pulp blog covering South Florida media. So many comments coming from people who obviously work for the media, but completely anonymous. I know it's a question of worrying about their comments getting back to their editors, but hey, no one can get a letter to...

Miami Herald columnist Fred Grimm, in his new blog The Grimm Truth , makes a statement about journalism and blogging that strikes true to me, Blogging, Circa 1968 : Writing for a small town newspaper, knocking out one little story after another, every day, writing about everything that moved, I was utterly intertwined in the life of the community. And the community wasn't shy about telling me I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. I was blogging. I just didn't know it yet. This one will be on my daily visit list.

One of the things I miss most about reading newspapers online is getting to see all the pictures, in a size where you can make out detail. Many papers' online photos leave much to be desired, in size and number. So I'm thrilled to see this new feature from the Boston Globe, The Big Picture , a daily blog where the best news photos of the day are posted in large format. If one photo isn't enough, there are often links to more on the topic, such as these amazing pictures from the aftermath of the Chinese quake. I like this a lot.

In the upcoming issue of New York Review of Books: The Library in the New Age , by Robert Darnton. This discussion of how information is disseminated spends a bit of time on news, blogs, and other new media. Good stuff: ...stories about blogging point to the same conclusion: blogs create news, and news can take the form of a textual reality that trumps the reality under our noses. Today many reporters spend more time tracking blogs than they do checking out traditional sources such as the spokespersons of public authorities. News in the information age has broken loose from its conventional moorings, creating possibilities of misinformation on a global scale. We live in a time of unprecedented accessibility to information that is increasingly unreliable. Or do we? I would argue that news has always been an artifact and that it never corresponded exactly to what actually happened. ...having learned to write news, I now distrust newspapers as a source of information, and I am often surpr...

Over the weekend, a few things have caught my eye and I wonder what they mean: At HeraldWatch , there's a rumor that the Miami Herald may be getting ready to lay off 230 people . Not surprising, but sad anyway. Things aren't good at newspapers these days. The Herald recently had some buyouts and lost long time senior reporter Martin Merzer, photographer Nuri Vallbona, and business writer Susana Barciela, among others. I guess it wasn't enough. Even more disturbing to a former Herald library employee, there was an earlier posting reporting on a memo from editor Anders Gyllenhaal suggesting the library functions may be outsourced . ( Update :) a new blog, Papercuts , is tracking newspaper layoffs. There was such a thing several months back is this the same one? (Via Buzzmachine.) ( Update: ) More on the Miami Herald from Random Pixels , who has been keeping an eye on editing on the Web site, and other Herald matters. Lots of interesting discussion going on about the future...

Somehow I think I never got around to reading anything of Julie Powell 's blog, The Julie/Julia Project , which she started in August 2002 as an attempt to reproduce all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking . I heard about the blog, and meant to read it, but somehow found other cooking blogs and never got back to it. Julie Powell went on to make a book out of her story: Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (on sale right now at Amazon). And now it is becoming a movie. Screenplay by Nora Ephron, who also directs and produces, and Julie is played by Amy Adams and Julia Child by....Meryl Streep! Apparently the movie will also tell the story of Julia's years in France, with Stanley Tucci playing her husband Paul. Julie & Julia, 2009 . Hmmm. Another blog leads to a huge success. There may be something in this thing.....

Over at Time Goes By , Ronni Bennett has set up a survey to find out more about bloggers over 50. Says Ronni: The goal is to find out what elderbloggers are like, how we may be similar and how we are different, how we relate to technology, how we came to be bloggers or blog readers, how we feel about it and what our demographics are. This is for bloggers and blog readers, so if you're in the age group and have any interest in blogs -- and you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't -- help out by taking this brief survey. It says it takes 20 minutes but I think I did it in 5. (I'd have posted the graphic link to the survey but Blogger isn't letting me upload images right now.) (Added later:) I love this, in an earlier post on Ronni's blog, in her 'Crabby Old Lady' guise: One of the pleasures of writing primarily for elders is they understand historical references or know how to look them up. A young reader emailed about yesterday’s post asking who Joe...