Unless you've been reading The Diplomatic Times Review Online and The Technology Free Press, it may appear that I haven't been blogging much lately. Well, I have. It's just that my interest are so varied, I've been blogging primarily about diplomacy and Web technology. I'm fascinated by computers and Internet technology. The fascination with web/tech is what prompted me to create The Technology Free Press in 2006. I've spent a lot of time over there lately. That's why The Blogging Journalist hasn't been updated since July 21, 2007
I'm also fascinated by international affairs and diplomacy. I have been since my late father explained to me in the late 1950s why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The subject had come up in school.
His narratives about his service in the Philippines and New Guinea during World War II also fascinated me. He also served in the Korean conflict. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, he came home one evening and told us: "Children, I may have to go to war again if the Russians don't get their missiles out of Cuba." I recalled praying that the negotiations between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev and their respective diplomats succeed so my father wouldn't have to go to war. I can still remember the fear I had as a result of the crisis. My father was in the Army reserves by then.
Although I was only eleven-years old at the time, my interest in diplomacy was heightened by my fear and by reading about the crisis in the newspaper and listening to news about it on CBS radio. Thanks to my father, I was a voracious reader of history, especially alternative history, even at that age. That also contributed to my interest in diplomacy. This combination of influences led to me writing about diplomacy and international affairs during the late 1970s and 1980s, when I worked as a full-time journalist in Chicago. I closely followed world events in those days and got a chance to meet and interview foreign diplomats, government officials, representatives of liberation movements and a prime minister or two. I even came across a few spies.
Today I still have an avid interest in diplomacy and world affairs. That's why I haven't given up the The Diplomatic Times Review, which started out as a website in 2003. I painstakingly updated it almost daily using Microsoft FrontPage. It was converted into a blog in 2004. Before it became one, I commented on world events at The Foreign News Observer blog, which I shut down after I brought TDT online. I still own the domain name. By the way, The Diplomatic Times actually started out as a newsletter in September 2000.
Am I tired of The Blogging Journalist? No. I' still have that strong interest in offerings news and commentary about blogging and the media in general. It's just that I don't write about it as much as I once did. Health issues have a lot to do with how much time I allocate to blogging.
at The Inquisitr. "We know that content is key, and that increasingly with the emergence of Blogging 2.0 that participation is also vital, but neither account for success exclusively," he opines.
