Literally everyone here at TMV and our immediate and extended families happily welcomes TMV’s “final” new co-blogger, Pete Abel, as we gear up for 2007 and a new era in Blogtopia (term “Blogtopia” © skippy the bush kangaroo).
Pete Abel has a gem of a centrist weblog called Central Sanity, which has the great tagline “supporting the rebellion of reasonable people in an unreasonable world.” That hit a nerve with TMV. And we immediately linked to a post by Pete Abel and tried to steer our readers to his site, so they could discover a blog and writer that DESERVED greater attention due to his thoughtfulness and focus on issues, rather than on personalities and other blogs.
Two of us in particular felt that it was important to invite Pete ASAP so he could do his cross-posts, pointer posts and occasional original posts for our readers on a regular basis. And he has not disappointed us in raising provocative issues in his first posts here and here.
With Pete graciously accepting our heartfelt invitation, we now offer readers a kind of buffet of centrist thought. All of us (who differ on how we see some issues) also enjoy linking to thoughtful veteran and new writers of the right, left and center. And we’ll continue to do so as we move into 2007 and consider reformating TMV to make it more “reader friendly” for existing readers and for the many new readers we hope will visit in 2007 as we continue to try and strengthen Internet centrism and the interplay of ideas.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.