PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that it what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions like.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Given my background in journalism, I always have been a person who wanted to get his hands dirty reading a real newspaper.

But in the last few years, something has happened.

I have taken to reading newspapers on-line. 

An incredible change for me, one I never would have predicted years ago with ink-stained hands.

Why the change?

It’s easy to read newspapers on line –= newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and, yes, even the Oregonian, now only a faint example of its stronger past.

To this, I add that I read Oregon Public Broadcasting and Salem Reporter news on-line because both offer quality journalism.

All of this just indicates, I guess, that, as you age, stuff changes.