Welcome to This Is Not News. If this is your first time here, this is a site that tries to help create the kind of democratic community envisioned by American philosopher John Dewey. More on that here.
If you’ve been here in any of the site’s earlier incarnations and are wondering why I’ve gotten on the blog bandwagon, that’s a good question. It’s been five years since I first launched Not News, and it’s had two significant periods of dormancy when I couldn’t muster the time or energy to produce lengthier articles on a regular schedule. But I still have a lot to say about the topics that led me to launch the site, and I think the informality of the blog structure might be more conducive to that. I have also seen sites like Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo use the blog model to help foster a certain kind of electronic community, and I think I’d like to get a little bit more involved in that conversation.
The message board and site archive are still here, and I have no plans to take them down any time soon. In fact there’s a good chance that lengthier blog pieces might work their way into a more permanent form in one of those two areas. I’m still working out how this is all going to work, and trying to tinker a little bit under the hood here, so please bear with me for a while.