Pixated

Yesterday I found myself writing a fellow editor from my print days that the “ink in my veins” has dried up and been replaced by free-flowing pixels.

Publishing is still about words and pictures, except that ink and paper are a lot more expensive than pixels — and that makes a big difference.

If you have a computer (and who doesn’t these days?), the start-up costs for on-line publishing are virtually zero. Because of that, there aren’t a bunch of advertisers looking over your shoulder.

Of course there’s a whole lot more competition for readers, resulting in what mass media moguls rue as the dread “fragmented” market.

But one publisher’s fragmentation is another’s diversification.

Besides, any moderately tagged site not fixated on profit is instantly accessible through search engines. I’m amazed at the numbers of readers who “stumble” on The Red Electric because they are searching for “Ernie Pyle” or “A Pattern Language” or “Olympia Typewriters” or “Thoreau” or “billboards” or “farmers markets.”

Now that’s diversity!

I started posting less than a year ago. Over last weekend I passed the 400-post mark. I won’t do it tonight, but I need to examine the scope of those post topics to see whether I can stitch together a theme or two.

Without going into detail here, I’ll let you in on one: I am a “res … publican,” but I’ll leave that for another time.

Finally, just to show you how bad my obsessed, pixated brain is, I’ve started another web site, and, as of today, the first post is up. If you are interested, visit Back Space Typewriters.

Oh, and then there is always Hillsdale News, a site/e-newsletter serving our community.

See what I mean? Total pixation!