Well for one thing I'm not one of these so-called "citizen journalist" who've never set foot in the bathroom down the hall from, never mind in a newsroom.Yes, I've been a real journalist in radio broadcasting during which in the late 70's and early 80's my reporting was cited several times from honorable mention to runner up to winning an award from the Associated Press in 1979.
While my primary duties at WLAD-AM and WDAQ-FM in Danbury, Ct was Sports Director/Producer, I also was fill-in newscaster and each year while at the radio stations was the Democratic HQ's anchor during election night coverage of local, state and national elections.
During that time I had reports picked up, both written and/or voiced, by WPOP-AM (then an all news station in Hartford, CT), WCBS-AM (all news station in New York City) ABC Radio Network, ABC Sports Radio Network, Associated Press Wire Service and Associated Press Audio Service.Some of my audio reports were heard nationwide on a variety of stations carrying ABC Radio News and Sports and the Associated Press Audio Service.
Almost 20 years after I left I returned to radio, this time working behind the scenes until a nationwide downsizing back in 2006 at CBS Broadcasting where I worked at the Hartford, CT Radio Group of four stations.
After the downsizing and doing some research about what avenue of blogs were coming into popularity I decided to develop blogs/websites for the LGBT community under the moniker of Artlyn Entertainment.
In 2007 the first and still running blog/website I published was LGBT Rainbow Links which also at the time aside from being a link list of LGBT sites had postings regarding the LGBT community. After doing that for awhile I stopped doing postings and left the blog/website strictly as it is today a link list of LGBT websites, blogs and community sources. In 2008 I added the LGBT Newscenter which offers headline links from various sources and includes LIVE VIDEO from CBS News.
After publishing some other blogs of various types in 2008 - 2009 I was asked if I would be interested in doing a "community blog" with an LGBT flavor for Hearst Newspapers here in Connecticut and Focus On The Rainbow (FOTR) was born.
That first version, and because I was very aware the four websites it appeared on had a wide variety of readers, as in heterosexual, it was compared to future editions tepid in presenting news from various sources which was affecting the LGBT community.
A year after FOTR had been with Hearst I was approached to do it at a new website called OutLoudBlogs which was developed much the same as FireDogLake and featuring self-contained blogs by LGBT writers.
Later in the year of 2010 the publisher of OutLoudBlogs, for personal reasons, was going to shut down the website and with that FOTR became a stand alone at WordPress.
All was going well until March of 2011 when I was involved in a car accident which severely damaged a hip, thus two surgeries and months of med leave. Postings on that version came to a standstill for several months and then when I was just getting back into the swing of things a heart attack in August put the kibosh on FOTR again. After all I had gone through and at the time losing interest in blogging I deleted FOTR.
The shame of that is what had been saved and moved over from OutLoudBlogs and new postings were in a way a history of what had transpired in the LGBT community for over a year's time.
Later last year (2011) I decided to start this the third version of FOTR here at blogspot.com.
I also started a second version of FOTR this time back on WordPress which I offer longer articles than on this blogspot.com version.
At the beginning of June (2012) I started editing and publishing a web paper through the website Paper.il, The Focus On The Rainbow Daily Run.
Towards the end of June, I began a blog, again on WordPress, devoted to bringing to the forefront of news the perilous jobs journalists around the world face, sometimes with physical harm and even death.
That blog is titled Reporters Footnotes.
And of course where would we be without social media so FOTR is also on Twitter.
Focus On The Rainbow on BlogTalkRadio premieres September 12, 2012
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CONTENT
Any "cut/paste" written content is duly noted either as or by a combination of acknowledgement, italics or link to original source of content used in postings. Any portion of a posting which may be classified as "news" including quotes of an interviewee and would fall under the journalistic term of "rewrite" will have a link to source used by this writer. The only exception to acknowledgement would be using "news" as reported by multiple news sources.
Any portion of a posting which can be deemed as commentary or opinion is that of this writer unless otherwise noted.
This writer does not entertain the idea of using a source or content of what would be considered "gossip" or "widely speculative information" as part of writings. Nor does this writer use exclusively as a source another blog which can not backup the material it presents nor link to its source for "news" another blog. Thus eliminating the all to often practice of copy/paste of erroneous or incomplete information or "news" from one blog to another which unfortunately occurs all too often among LGBT blogs.
Postings which may have future "news" updates most likely will not be updated. It behooves the reader to follow continuing events from other sources rather than to expect this writer to continually update postings as presented here.
Postings which may have future "news" updates most likely will not be updated. It behooves the reader to follow continuing events from other sources rather than to expect this writer to continually update postings as presented here.
Photos used in postings are found via Google photo search and are used under Creative Commons and are the property of the original content provider. In only rare cases does this writer offer "credit" for photo.
Copyright use of videos are the responsibility of those who upload said videos to YouTube, YouTube itself and its owners.
Permission is granted for use of original content/writings or commentary of this author preferably with a link back to posting.
Overall presentation of this blog (and others offered by this Publisher) and its content (except copyrighted content from other sources and the format from Blogger) and the name Focus On The Rainbow is copyrighted by Artlyn Entertainment - 2007 - 2012.
