Letter from the Editor: Four years in the books

Dec. 4, 2010   Leave a Comment  

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My god. Have we really been at this for four years already? It seems like just yesterday I was watching the countdown clock on our original domain name, theblastarea.com as we prepared to edit and put out our first magazine issue on 1/1/2007. A lot has changed in that time. Not only has the magazine [...]

Letter from the editor: A “Dear John” to the French fries

Dec. 31, 2008   2 Comments  

My dear, dear French fries, We need to talk. The years have gone by so fast for us. From my first McDonald’s fry 24 years ago to the wide crinkle cut deliciousness at Glenwood in Connecticut and Town Spa in Stoughton. It’s always been good. That was never the problem. Something changed between us. It [...]

Letter from the editor: So how bad WAS IX Web Hosting?

Aug. 1, 2008   7 Comments  

Let me first apologize. For about a year now, we’ve been using IX Web Hosting as an inexpensive solution to our very simple web hosting needs — three domains powered by WordPress. After all, we don’t have any key sponsors, and I fund Blast with my own money when it isn’t making its own cash. [...]

Letter from the Editor: What did we learn this month?

Jan. 31, 2008   2 Comments  

It was a long month packed with news, drama and Britney going to the hospital. In an homage to Letterman’s return to the air, here are the top 10 things you should come away with in January: 10. Your dog will soon take over the world. 9. Don’t stay on the top floor of a [...]

Letter from the editor: Kyla Ebbert Kyla Ebbert Kyla Ebbert

Dec. 15, 2007   Leave a Comment  

Google rankings of our Mitchell Report story

I saw the stats, and I still didn’t believe it. We wrote a 189-word brief about Kyla Ebbert — a Southwest Airlines passenger who was almost kicked off for wearing a skimpy (it wasn’t even that skimpy really…) outfit. Then the counter started ticking like dollars on a gas pump. By the end of the [...]

Letter from the Editor – November

Nov. 1, 2007   Leave a Comment  

I want to tell you a little more about our editors. The newest addition to the Blast crew, Bessie King is with us in Boston as the Entertainment Editor. That’s the reason why you’re seeing a ton more content and some quality news reporting, like our instant coverage of Marie Osmond’s fall during Dancing With [...]

What the…?

Oct. 17, 2007   Leave a Comment  

We’re unveiling distinct, new pages for each for each of our sections, a new home page and a redesigned individual article page as well as over 100 tweaks and fixes.

Letter to the editor: Country music star concerned about Darfur

Aug. 1, 2007   1 Comment  

As you read this there is a genocide occurring on our Earth. Not in a book or a film or a museum, but in real time. In the Darfur region of Sudan, a country on the east coast of Africa, 10,000 people a month, fifteen an hour, are being killed by their government. Three million [...]

Letter from the Editor: Blast – The (open) Online Magazine

July 9, 2007   2 Comments  

I hope you’re enjoying July’s issue of Blast Magazine so far. A lot has gone into development and content lately, and I want to share some content developments with you. The big news is that we are taking the Creative Commons road. We’re licensing all of our content under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License, meaning [...]

Letter from the editor

June 2, 2007   Leave a Comment  

Summertime. Blast Magazine clearly doesn’t fear change, and I hope you don’t either. What we’re trying to do is be able to put out flashy covers and section pages and use our excellent graphic design and photography abilities while still providing you with fresh content that comes out more than once a month. So here’s [...]

Letter from the editor

May 1, 2007   Leave a Comment  

Well, it’s May. This month we flew out to Hollywood to sit down with Dominic Comperatore, a perennial television actor who has made his emergence onto the big screen in a big way. Kelly Bodami talked with him and we’re happy to present his story. What the hell happened with this Don Imus shit? We [...]

Letter from the Editor

April 1, 2007   Leave a Comment  

Blast has been under the knife lately, and the facelift is coming along nicely. The navigation is more conducive to all screen resolutions, and our dynamic archives system kicked off in mid-March, powered by WordPress. We designed the hell out of Blast as our editorial and creative staff continually try to provide that perfect magazine [...]

Letter from the Editor

March 1, 2007   Leave a Comment  

Massachusetts may finally have a chance passing a journalism shield law. California and 29 other states already have one, but that hasn’t helped Josh Wolf, a video-blogging convergence journalist who videoed an anti-G8 demonstration in 2005 and has been jailed under federal regulations for refusing to turn over footage to the police. It is clear [...]

Letter from the Editor

Feb. 1, 2007   Leave a Comment  

Everybody hates Valentine’s Day. But here at Blast, we use it as an excuse to talk about sex and relationships. What’s the deal with make-up sex anyway? This month, we decided to look at romance issues that are often discussed but seldom analyzed. In this month’s feature photo gallery/article, our cover couple, Cat Armato and [...]

Letter from the editor

Jan. 1, 2007   Leave a Comment  

Happy New Year indeed. Welcome to Blast Magazine, a hard-fought piece of journalism. In the late 1990s, the Internet was in what could be called a golden age. For starters, it was much smaller. MySpace wasn’t around and Google was a fledgling search engine. AOL dial-up was how Americans actually got online. During that time, [...]