Jack Shafer...A Stand-up Guy

As Editor At Large for Slate magazine, Jack Shafer manages the bi-or-tri-weekly "Press Box" column in the famously contrarian weekly news source. With previous stints as editor of the Washington City Paper and San Francisco Weekly, Shafer carries wisdom and a keen sense of journalistic accuracy after being involved in an infamous "Monkeyfishing" scandal with reporter Jay Forman. This dispute was the result of Forman formulating an erroneous story about Floridians baiting traps to catch monkeys in the Florida Keys. Libertarian in political persuasion, Shafer has given emphasis on drug wars and the discipline of today's news-gathering and opinion columnists.   Ok, enough official talk. Just like Shafer, I choose to focus on the lighter yet somewhat serious implications of cultural events. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good mindless story about the "Greatest Movie Nicknames," for example (Maverick is still the best), but I try to make strides to read the well-written ones. That is precisely what Jack aims to give us. In his story "Blog overkill," he writes " much of what I do—write, post, link, read, communicate with readers, devote myself to an arcane subject—resembles what most bloggers do, except that I get paid for it...The biggest difference between me and conventional bloggers is that I usually pause between first thought and posting." Keeping this in mind, I will try to do the same. You can expect me to keep it light, but for the sake of decency, I'll do it up right. Hahahaha! But seriously, expect me to mix it up and give this blog some flavor. I guess you could say I'm a variety show on the Web. Take my background for example. Rolling green vistas are beautiful. Then there is a cliff. Cliffs are scary. I'll stop now...