Xander here. Remember me? I worked with you a few years ago on the Patriot Act Forum, while I was ED of Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility. I share your frustration with political demogoguery and a political discourse that is not based on anything I, at least, recognize as reality. To do something about it I am running for Multnomah County Commissioner. I’d like to talk to you about it. I tried calling the number by your name in the phone book, but, unless you have turned from blogger to used car salesman, it no longer works. Please email me at info@voteXander.org. Thanx!

From December 2002 until September of this year, I was the sole writer, editor, and publisher of this site, a widely-acclaimed “experiment in amateur journalism and hobbyist reporting” (as my boilerplate went) which focused on Portland politics.

To discuss my personal experience of blogging (which was my assignment for this package of pieces) and not discuss the financial realities of full-time blogging at the local level would have been a disservice to the story.

My reasons for going into it were twofold: One, it’s a necessary part of the tale, to ignore it because it might make me or other people uncomfortable or appear unseemly would have been irresponsible.

Two, it tied into the quesiton at hand, which was blogging as mainstream media, in particular the quesiton of whether local blogospheres can support full-time writers.

There were, in fact, aspects of the personal financial issue which I was specifically asked to include but I refused to do so. Precisely because, in fact, they were irrelevant to the subject at hand.

What I did include was relevant to the subject at hand, and the specific insight I could bring to it based upon my own experiment.