
No, I don't write any of the articles that appear in the Newsletters, but sometimes to avoid copyright infringement I do paraphrase. Also, sometimes I just take notes when the news is on, and can't find which news stories they were quoting so I have to rely on those quick notes I have jotted down [this is often followed by a ? to indicate parts I am not sure I am quoting correctly]. As often as I can I give source material for those who would wish to follow up in more detail. Newsscan has folded, so there are no longer quotes from them. Once in a while I cut and paste from other sources with a URL given. When people submit items for the Newsletter, I just cut and paste in from their emails. Of course, I did write much of the boilerplate that houses statistic implementations, but I usually get the actual data from those who do what they can to keep track of every single book we post. [Posted], sadly to say, doesn't seem to be getting through to me entirely: so we usually have to compare counts several times, and sometimes a day or two later we find out we need to make a correction. We've put in requests for new Newsletter editors for quite some time without much success, even though we have offered those who reply an enormous amount of freedom. If you'd like to see something different, all you have to do is make it your own way, and we'd be only too glad to give you a shot. Thanks!!! Michael On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
Aaron Cannon wrote:
Wow! I just read the news letter for this week. It's been a few months since last time. How long has it been this way? When did it go from the news of Project Gutenberg to the blog of Michael Hart?
It's been a long time since the PG newsletter was *just* news of Project Gutenberg. Back in March 1998 [1], the newsletter started including excerpts from Edupage. Then NewsScan in June 1999 [2]. (They shifted to the weekly newsletter when it was introduced in April 2001.) Although not news of PG, they were presumably news items that Michael Hart thought would be of interest to newsletter subscribers. He would often add editorial remarks [in square brackets], which were sometimes opinion, but were usually very short.
Back in April 2003, the weekly newsletter was split into 2 (then 3, then 2) parts, of which Part 1 was Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section, which continued to include the news excerpts and Michael's occasional remarks on them.
The October 1, 2003 weekly newsletter [3] contains what you might consider the start of "Michael Hart's blog". In it, after the NewsScan and Edupage items, Michael introduced a section entitled "[And A Few Articles That Didn't Get Enough Coverage]", including articles (apparently written by MH himself) about (1) presidential candidate Howard Dean and (2) cracking in the polar ice caps. This section soon became "More Headline News Mostly Avoided By The Major U.S. Media" and continues to this day.
In the July 7, 2004 newsletter, he added: STRANGE QUOTE OF THE WEEK SIMPLE SOLUTION OF THE WEEK July 28, 2004: ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK August 11, 2004: ODD GOVERNMENTAL REGULATIONS OF THE WEEK October 20, 2004: PREDICTION OF THE WEEK January 26, 2005: "If we could shrink the earth's population to a village ..." March 23, 2005: DOUBLESPEAK OF THE DAY [later WEEK] June 8, 2005: POEM OF THE WEEK
Many of these sections continue to appear in the newsletter.
[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/newsletter/archive/PGMonthly_1998_03-04.txt [2] http://www.gutenberg.org/newsletter/archive/PGMonthly_1999_06_02.txt [3] http://www.gutenberg.org/newsletter/archive/PGWeekly_2003_10_01_Part_1.txt
-Michael Dyck
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