Last week, literally out of the blue, I got an email from Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb. He said that the blog had an opening for a news blogger, and would I be interested? Say no more, I replied. I am just a bit more than slightly interested.

In fact, I was thrilled.

So, after setting some timetables and learning the ropes, I can finally announce that I am RWW’s newest daily news blogger! I will be providing the tech and new media communities updates every weekday afternoon. In fact, I’ve already begun, you can already check out my very first RWW post here. We slipped it in Sunday night as a sort of test.

That’s not all the good news, however.

Apparently, though a series of what I can only believe to be fortuitous coincidences, I managed to score a press pass to South by Southwest Interactive this year! Oh my yes, I’ll be there representing RWW!

It took me a while to pick my jaw off the floor when the team revealed this news to me, as you may imagine.

Now before you start wondering if I somehow deposed a more capable, seasoned writer.. as far as I know, I didn’t. It happened to be the case where due to prior commitments (and perhaps the fact that I live near Austin) it was available. But I’m not looking this gift horse in the mouth! I’m just going to try my hardest to prove that their gamble with me pays off for everyone concerned.

So that’s my news. I honestly don’t know how it is going to affect my posting frequency here and other blogs that I write for, such as Louis Gray’s site yet. Time will tell. But please do follow me over on RWW as often as you can, and know that I am certainly open to post ideas, suggestions and recommendations.

There are a lot of opinions out there about what makes a blogger different from a writer, or even a columnist.  Bloggers seem to be in their own category according to everyone who writes (either for a living or for the love of it) and is not actually a blogger themselves.

Writer Wannabe’s

In fact, even bloggers don’t often like referring to themselves collectively as bloggers.  It’s almost too easy to say, he’s not a writer.. he’s a blogger. As if blogging did not call upon the same internal resources as writing.  You could argue the long form, of course… most bloggers will never write a novel by themselves, nor are they especially motivated to.

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I was going to write an opinion piece tonight, inviting my readership provide feedback on the best tactics I could employ to start moving toward blogging as a profession.  Apparently, the wait for someone to offer me riches in return for writing for their blog tactic I have been taking up until now hasn’t struck pay dirt.

With plenty of hubris, I was pleasantly dreaming of my easy entry into a work-from-home lifestyle, writing insightful, hard-hitting prose for a thankful employer and fawning audience.  If only they saw in me that spark of brilliance that I would sound too egoistic to point out directly! I thought to myself.  I perused my writings on my blog.  Why couldn’t this be my job?  I love it, I’m good at it.. perfect!  .. right?

Wrong.

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