Out With The Old - In With The News

For those of you who have heard about this new blog, welcome. It's a totally new enterprise that in some ways is completely refreshing, and in some ways it's a little daunting. For fifteen years, I wrote a very popular column for Scripps Howard.

Writing the column was wonderful, but very restricting. The topics I was not allowed to touch included: day care and all descriptions therein. I could not write about the little school I own, my family, my life, so the column became very formal. I was not allowed to touch on anything current, popular or in the news.

In the forty five second conversation that closed the column, two things stunned me. First, that the senior editor at the Evansville Courrier and Press openly admitted that the new format at the paper did not have room for a childcare column - a column on kids, and secondly, neither my editor nor her editor knew what I do for a living. When I asked that they publish this new blog address, they refused. Fifteen years.

But on to bigger things!

With this blog, I hope that the world of childcare, especially locally, opens up. It is not a cloak and dagger subject to be hidden. It is perhaps the only positive news subject available. Children should be in the news and have a corner for discussion, because children are our future.

There are too many families struggling to raise children alone. They need all the support they can get, and this blog is a tribute to them. I hope people will share openly all that they do regarding the children they love.

As a reporter for the National Media Service, I interview the researchers who put out new studies on childcare. I intend to publish those studies in full. Did you know that millions of tax dollars are spent on these studies that you have little or no access to? They are about your world and your children, yet where do you see them? There is no room at the inn.

I hope to set up this blog by subject and current interest. You will find a new weekly column, and older columns that relate. Please don't hesitate to write to ask about topics of interest. That's what we are about.

I welcome your ideas and comments.

Judy