EDITOR'S NOTES
Flogging our blog

Why jump on the Web log bandwagon? To give you fresher views of Chicago—and room to log your thoughts.
It turns out that starting a blog is a bit like getting a dog. At the first mention of the idea, there’s wild, almost childlike enthusiasm. Who wouldn’t want a fluffy little puppy? It will be so much fun. But then your inner grown-up kicks in. Who’s going to feed it, take it for walks? The whole thing will be a lot of work.

What happens on campus between issues is here: magazine.uchicago.edu/UChiBLOGo.

So when the Magazine staff began to discuss publishing its own blog—short for Web log, an online journal—with reports of campus happenings, we seesawed. Taking the seesaw skyward was the opportunity to have more room to cover more events more quickly. We’d be able to show, for example, not only a photograph of double-helix codiscoverer James D. Watson, PhB’46, SB’47, giving a campus talk, but also a closeup of the Watson bobblehead dolls on sale in the lobby afterwards. And we’d be able to post the story a day after the event, not a month or more later. Sending our seesaw thudding heavily back to ground, however, were the parental questions of resources and rewards: What if we gave a blog and nobody came?

Because the real appeal of a blog, and the reason we decided to launch UChiBLOGo this January, is the forum it provides for reader feedback. UChiBLOGo—updated by Associate Editor Amy Braverman and Web Developer Ryan Nagdeman every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 3 p.m. Chicago time—offers the staff’s takes on campus life, but we’re hoping for your reactions as well.

We’ve started the blog experiment, picked out the puppy. Now all we have to do is wait to see if the dog will hunt.

Readers feel the pull
So far this year almost 3,800 readers—many drawn by our offer to trade a set of magnetic Chicago icons for a contribution of $35 or more—have responded to our annual request for gifts to help underwrite the cost of producing the Magazine, giving more than $138,000. Thank you.

A name to note
There’s a new name on the masthead. Associate Editor Megan Lisagor joined us in November, fresh from a Spanish immersion program in Costa Rica and a cross-country road trip. She previously covered homeland security for Federal Computer Week in Washington, DC. With a master’s from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (2000) and a bachelor’s in English and French from the University of Virginia (1999), Megan is happy to return to campus life, especially in a paid position. In addition to writing features (“Theory: Still on the Table,”), she edits the “Investigations” department.—M.R.Y.