YOU SAY GOODBYE, I SAY HELLO

Credit: pxhere.com

You can't go wrong with a Beatles song title as the title of your first post.

Remember Admiral James Stockdale? He was H. Ross Perot's presidential running mate. Remember H. Ross Perot? In the first vice presidential debate that year, the Admiral opened by saying "who am I? Why am I here?"

Let me answer those same questions. For 19 years, I was Program Director at Finger Lakes News Radio in Geneva, NY and for 15 of them, hosted the Finger Lakes Morning News. It became increasingly difficult to wake up at 4AM as I entered my 60s, and so last November, I accepted an offer to join the staff at fingerlakes1.com. I had been appearing on one of their podcasts on a regular basis, and I was told I would report on local news, host podcasts, write blogs, and eventually, host the site's live flagship morning show.

Well, it turns out websites are subject to the same revenue difficulties being faced by local media throughout the country, and I was laid off in September of this year. 

I approached Finger Lakes News Radio about returning to my old job, and the answer was no.

You can take the boy out of the media, but you can't take the media out of the boy. 

With the staffing cuts that have hit the local media in recent years, there are a lot of stories that aren't being told, so I'm going to tell them. My intent is to bring you original local news, newsmaker interviews, and occasional observations on the state of the world and craft beverages.

If you listened to me on the radio, you know I have a lot of opinions and haven't been afraid to express them. I'll express some of them here, but there are a lot of places where you can go for political opinions (see my blog list on the right) and I don't think many minds are being changed these days.

So here we go. Let me know what you think, and what you'd like to see and hear covered, and I'll do my best to oblige, but I won't get up at 4AM to do it.