For most people most of the time, individual stories in today’s news do not matter that much. A White House official said something, progress on a treaty occurred, more casualties were reported… these are usually factoids and details that don’t make a coherent whole.
On the other hand, most of these factoids are parts of larger stories which are important if you want to understand the world or participate in a democracy. This is the Slow News which is hard to acquire and harder to piece together.
If I had 7 days a week of free time and a staff of five, I think I could put together a good Slow News site which delves into questions about policy, politics, and history. slow-news.org is written in my spare time and so won’t be much more than occasional thoughts on the news, on culture, and now and then on incidents in my life that I find interesting or amusing. But the idea of “Slow News” represents my aspiration to talk about the underlying story represented in the daily Fast News.
In an ideal world, the culture and personal stories would be on a separate website. Perhaps later I will spin them off to one if I keep up at this.
Who am I? My name is Barry A. Klinger, born in 1964 in Brooklyn NY, living since then in New York, followed by Massachusetts, followed by Florida, and now in Maryland. I am a climate dynamics professor at George Mason University in Fairfax VA, where I have a website that discusses my work and related topics in physical oceanography, climate, and the graphical display of quantitative information.
Besides leaving comments on the site, you can reach me at BarryAKlinger@comcast.net. I would love to post any piece by other people that is written in the spirit of slow news – provided I like it!