Peter Jennings died yesterday morning at the age of 67 from lung cancer. I would classify him and Bernard Shaw as the top goal that I am shooting for as a journalist. I had a chance to talk briefly to him in March of last year while attending a media conference. I told him how enamoured I was that although he never completed high school, he became very studious of the world, and strived to bring truth to light, no matter what the cost was. I told him that I sat watching his coverage of September 11th for 20 hours straight; his words made the situation for me easier. At the time I had just come from Japan working with Reuters and anticipated going back. I was upset because I knew I wouldn't get back so soon, but Peter's humanity during the crisis made me realize that as jounalists we have an obligation to cover the story no matter how it affects us personally.
Peter asked what I was doing now. I replied "Im back in school." He then said, "Good. You're doing the right thing. Worry about the other stuff later, just concentrate on learning your trade." Truer words were never spoken.
This is an experiment of sorts to try to tie together my online identity and my offline personality. I've made plenty of business oriented sites, but I have never actually put together one for myself personally... With the advent of social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace along with blog sites like Blogger and Twitter, I find that I have cut a wide swath here in the internet, in terms of being actively online, but there isn't one place to really tie that information together. So this will be an attempt at doing so.