Fun things to do on a vacation day
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Every Thursday a group of MPR employees from different departments has a lunch get-together to discuss one facet of what we do. Today it was political coverage and they asked me to speak.
We were recalling the early days of MPR online...back in the mid '90s as we started talking about blogs and podcasts. I had asserted that one of the first blogs was actually Citizen Spin, which lasted about a week or two before one of the bosses got a nasty e-mail about it. Back then, one was all it took.
That was in 1999. (The good Citizen returned briefly during last year's shutdown. He was wearing winter clothing,by the way, because while we had original artwork the first time for various times of the year, the only one we could find was the one for winter).
Then, John Pearson, the guy who started MPR's online efforts, said that this was actually the first political blog (Democrats here | Republicans here | Bipartisans here), although we didn't call it a blog at the time, of course.
Then we started talking about podcats and Web-only "shows" and, until John reminded me, I had fogotten all about Spin Cycle. There's a few links still around on the MPR site but they're all broken so it's probably gone forever. But I used to bring the Capitol reporters in and stick in an analyst-type and open up the microphone and let them gas on. I'd snap pictures and then spend the afternoon matching up the audio and pictures in RealSlideshow.
We didn't have many listeners. But it was fun. And it planted a flag in the ground, I guess.
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