A Blog Accounting Students Will Love

I haven't updated this blog much lately because of the press of other (i.e., paying) business, so I was pleased to find this blog listed with nineteen others by Rasmussen College in a list of "20 Blogs Accounting Students Will Love."

The very kind and appreciated kudo can be found here. Tracy Coenen's blog was also listed. I was a bit surprised that other, far worthier (than mine) and busier accounting blogs weren't listed (Going Concern, Jr. Deputy Accountant, Sam Antar's), but what the hell.

© 2010 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

Out Google! Out AdBrite!

I'm delighted to report that today I have ousted Google ads and Adbrite from this blog.

The reason is simple: the bucks that they bring in just don't justify the way they clog the blog with text and intrusive scripts. No one complained, but I found it annoying myself to have to navigate an ad before accessing the blog. Besides, those blog ad services were ridiculously stingy. I was getting just a fraction of what they were bringing in.

So to hell mit 'em, as my grandmother would have said.

© 2010 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

THE BLOGGER DILEMMA: One of the first things I learned in journalism, way back in the early 1970s, is that only fools write for free. Nevertheless, nowadays a lot of journalists who aren't fools spend hours churning out blogs without a penny in compensation. Some of them are pretty damn good. Some stink on ice.

Andrew Sullivan comes to mind. (That is, in the "pretty damn good" category.) I've been reading his stuff for years. Andrew Sullivan writes for nothing. So why should I mind writing for nothing?

I also know some journo blogs that stink on ice, and if I get in a bad mood I may write about them as well.

I've heard it said that if H.L. Mencken were alive today, he would be blogging. I'll bet William Shirer, my childhood hero, would have a blog if he were still with us. He was an obsessive diarist, and blogs are diaries -- public diaries.

In addition to all of the above rubbish I have a good, solid, cynically commercial reason to start a blog. My new book Wall Street Versus America is hitting the stores on April 6. So I have several blog-related reasons related to that:

• First I want to write about some of the issues that will be raised in the book.
• Secondly I want to update stuff that I put in the book (and, I guess, correct any boo-boos that are brought to my attention, in case there are any, God forbid!).
• And lastly..... well, this is a new medium, and I've always been fascinated by new media.

I understand that at some point soon the Author's Guild, which hosts my website, will begin blogging capabilities for its authors. When that happens, I shall move this blog over there.

So, enough excuses. On with the blog!

gary-weiss.com

How's that for an unoriginal name for a blog? There's a reason for that. This blog should really be appearing on my website, www.gary-weiss.com. Unfortunately, my web publisher hasn't quite gotten the blogging machinery in gear just yet. So here I am, temporarily.

Why a blog?

Well, I'm hoping to use this to communicate with people who've read my book and my articles over the years, and give them an opportunity to sound off. Also I'd like to sound off a bit myself.

I'm at work on a second book but--sorry, I can't talk about that. Premature.

I just joined a consortium of investigative reporters who have come together to investigate the murder of Paul Klebnikov in Moscow a year.

But I can't talk about that either.

So what can I talk about? Well, pretty much anything else that comes into my mind. You won't find articles here, but rather musings, ramblings, and general nonsense. This is, after all, a blog.