Starting to blog…

IF you are reading this on Thursday (March 15, 2012) then I will be at a meeting of editors discussing the future of local newspapers. It is top secret so I can’t tell you much. However, I suspect there is a fair chance we will touch on the thorny subject of social media and how newspapers can embrace it. This mighty organ already has a website (www.thisiskent.co.uk) and its own Facebook page which is jolly good fun. We post lots of funny pictures from Times Towers on it. Most of the reporters also have Twitter accounts, which is fascinating. Friday nights have become essential reading as news editor Liz Crudgington (@freelanceliz) and I (@johnnurden) toil into the night to clear pages for the weekend. Then it is often off to the caekpub for a swift sherbet before wending our weary way home. It is known as the caekpub thanks to the strange world of Twitter. The other night we met a man who was celebrating his birthday. He was a very nice man, who also delivers leaflets, and he offered us a slice of his birthday cake. Delirious with the prospect of food we twittered the good news only for PR Jules Serkin (@julesserkin) to reply: “Cake?” Except that, in her excitement, she typed too quickly and the message ended up as caek. It was such a surprise that we have continued to call the pub by this new name. It gives it a certain Celtic flavour. Now, this social media is all very well but there is another level, that of the world of blogs. This is something completely new to me. I had been aware that others were “blogging” on the internet but I hadn’t given it much thought. However, with today’s meeting looming I decided I had better get up to speed and launch a blog or two. After all, writing a couple of hundred words shouldn’t be too difficult, should it? I settled down late at night (which appears to be when all the best blogs are written) and waited to be inspired. What could I write about? I finally plumped for one of my hobbies, playing guitar with The Wrinklies rock band. But what to call myself? I thought Wrinkly Sex God sounded cool and fun so I signed up with WordPress and started writing. It was only after some very strange people began contacting me that I realised the error of my ways. The first rule of blogging appears to be not to mention the S word unless you want a torrent of abuse or many weird requests, in this case from elderly women with very vivid imaginations. I have since changed it to Wrinkly Rock God which has so far received precisely zero hits. As a last resort, I have now started downloading past columns for the entire planet to inwardly digest and spit out. I have called it Nurden’s Notebook because it does what it says on the tin. Meanwhile, wish me luck for today’s meeting…