The Oregonian (and many other newspapers) might be in the midst of major newsroom shrinkage and other changes to its print edition, but that hasn’t stopped them from launching a new blog about “the culture of the commute”.
The “Hard Drive” blog officially launched today and will be written by Oregonian staff reporter Joseph Rose. Rose told me he’ll cover everything from TriMet to bike lanes. “Slap a “Share the Road” sticker on my forehead,” he wrote in an email about his new endeavor, “I want to be at the center of the whole bike-car-bus-walk-light rail continuum.”
You might be familiar with Rose’s reporting. He has covered many bike-related stories for the Oregonian over the years. In addition to the Hard Drive blog, Rose will pen a weekly print column called, “Commuting” that will appear on page A2 each Monday.
It’s an interesting sign that The Oregonian has decided to focus on this topic, and I’ll look forward to seeing how Rose’s blog develops in the coming months.
Check out Hard Drive at OregonLive.com.
Thanks for reading.
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Looks like you’ve finally got some competition in this town! I wish him my best, it will be interesting to see what issues he covers, given the differences in format and readership from what everyone is accustomed to here at BikePortland. You’ve set the bar high Jonathan; let’s see how Mr. Rose does.
Am I the only one who thinks “Hard Drive” is a strange name? Especially if he’s covering more than just cars?
don’t expect much from the Oregonian and their anti-cyclist editors
Driving should be hard, that way more people will quit doing it and start cycling.
The more voices discussing issues that are important to our community the better. Hopefully Mr. Rose will add another reasoned voice to the discussion.
yeah, i’ve seen Joe Roses stuff in the past (car vs. bikers!! omg!!) and i can say the one thing he is interested in is selling a story to his editors. i trust his journalistic integrity about as much as i trust Fox’s.
i think you can read into the O’s attempt as “hmmm, we need to have something as popular as Bikeportland, but more from the car driver’s point of view.”
People ought to at least take a look at the Hard Drive blog before dismissing it outright. So far at least, it’s not a blog like bikeportland, or a column like Phil Stanford’s over at the Tribune. For the most part it seems to be a collection of brief stories about bike related news and events.
There was an interesting story posted on the 28th about a nice grant L&C prof Kim Stafford got from the RAC. The subject he was awarded the grant to study seems to be more than simply from the driver’s point of view.
Kathleen wrote:
“Am I the only one who thinks “Hard Drive” is a strange name? Especially if he’s covering more than just cars?”
Agreed. As incongruous as it may be, however, it’s catchy and it’s sexy and it shows they’re in the biz of selling papers..so not to judge the book by its cover..
cool! awareness
Anybody remember Stephen Beaven’s commuting column in the O a few years (or so) ago? I’m interested to know what Joseph Rose’s column will offer that Beaven’s didn’t. For a while there, I thought Beaven’s tone was the most entertaining thing in the Oregonian, so I was a little confused as to why it was dropped.
Since Mr. Rose is obviously, in his first column, asking for submissions to drive his content, the way we get him to cover bike-related issues is to send him ideas!
Beaven hated cyclists, and especially the most dedicated of all, bike messengers.
It was very apparent in his column.
I see this effort as the O’ once again jumping on the bandwagon, trying to turn around the distrust the public has had of the Oregonian for a long time.
Good luck with that…..
I don’t see it working.
man, what a bunch of naysayers around here!