About This Blog
What is KnickerbockerBlog.net?
KnickerbockerBlog.com is a media blog maintained
by The Business Council of New York State with
the primary goal of tracking New York State media
coverage of state-level public-policy issues.
The goal is to give New Yorkers of all stripes
– Council members, taxpayers, journalists and
their readers, elected officials, candidates
for office, students, and anyone else – one-stop
shopping for each day's stories on economic-policy
issues in New York State. The focus is on policy,
but we recognize that most folks interested in
policy debate in Albany will also be interested
in related political skirmishing, so we pay some
heed to that, too.
We kicked off KnickerbockerBlog.com in February 2007, but KnickerbockerBlog.com is descended from UpstateBlog.net, which started with a similar mission (with an Upstate focus) in August of 2004.
If you go to www.upstateblog.net, you will be redirected to KnickerbockerBlog.com. Nonetheless, we encourage readers of UpstateBlog.net to change their bookmarks to reflect our new name and new URL. The archives from UpstateBlog.net will be available right here at KnickerbockerBlog.com.
What kinds of things are posted to KnickerbockerBlog.com?
On most weekdays, we scan about two dozen of New York's leading daily newspapers for stories (and editorials, columns, op-eds, and letters), on any and all issues that are relevant to the economic-policy debate in Albany. On Mondays, we try to review the weekend papers as well. From time to time, typically around holidays or during the vacation days of summer, we'll go on hiatus for a week or so.
Then we organize the stories we find by topic, making each item's headline a hyperlink to the story itself. From time to time, we'll also link to entries on other blogs, think tank reports, and the like.
On some occasions, we'll run brief excerpts of the stories, columns, editorials, op-eds, and letters that we find. Mostly, we assume that if you see something that interests you, you'll click through to the original story. (Beware: Newspaper links tend to expire after a week or so.)
On other occasions, we may offer some comments of our own on the merits or demerits of the piece of journalism in question.
Can I get each day's posts via e-mail and RSS?
Of course.
To receive our daily e-mail of the most recent posts to this blog, send e-mail to moderator@KnickerbockerBlog.com. We'll add you to the list. We try to send each day's posts out by mid-morning on weekdays.
To receive our posts via RSS, find the link to the the feed is in the top navigation bar of www.bcnys.org/KnickerbockerBlog.com.
RSS stands for “Real Simple Syndication.” Readers can subscribe to the RSS feed and then be notified each time something new is posted to the blog.
To get an RSS feed, you need software the reads feeds. Many feed-reader programs are free.
Who are the bloggers?
Matthew Maguire, director of communications for The Business Council, moderates the blog. Robert Ward, director of research for the Council, and Claire Hazzard, news writer for the Council, also post to the blog regularly.
How do I get in touch with the bloggers?
From time to time, our readers want to send us e-mails with criticism, compliments, ideas for stories we missed, references to stories on sites we don't normally check, or their own comments on policy matters. Simply send e-mail to moderator@KnickerbockerBlog.com.
We welcome all of these items, and sometimes we'll use them (without using any correspondent's name) in blog entries.