New Year's Resolution

I'm going to contribute more (and more often) to this blog to satisfy the undocumented, unproven, and possibly non-existent demand for Irish/American media analysis.

Let's face it: I need the practice. Despite the last 3-4 months of J-school, my portfolio still isn't much to speak of. Most of the ramblings and musings of my life don't make it as far as the printed page. I was already employed at this stage in my undergraduate education, and the prospect of a newspaper job is still as distant as it was when I started down this path.

So this will be a continuing personal exercise to train my hand and mind at the craft of journalism. Previous attempts have been abandoned after a few early posts; motivation fades; other deadlines loom.

However, I do have ulterior motives. This exercise may well evolve into a class project on personal explorations in journalism. More will certainly follow on this decision.

So if you're reading, Mr. Quin, please note that I'm doing this in full color Red-White-and-Blue style, complete with Oxford commas (after 'unproven', for example) and periods (not full stops, despite my new-found fondness for the word) after all the Mr.'s and Mrs.'s out there. And this will all be in 'color', not the slightly more cumbersome but equally descriptive 'colour' of the Irish press. Internet law is fuzzy at best; style guides are non-existent. I'm going with what I know best.

With that out of the way, let's get to the nitty gritty. My goals for this blog are three-fold:

1) Point out the most important 'news' stories of the day, from across the world's media

2) Highlight the best and the worst of opinion and analysis writing, in both Irish and American media

3) Provide context and personal commentary to aid understanding, mold opinion, and enliven the media-consuming experience

and of course, should this evolve into the exploration project it certainly could, there is a fourth:

4) Pass the class


Happy New Year --

k.