I’m Kurt Soller, one of Newsweek’s newest and youngest staffers. That means two things around here: first, I grew up with the Internet and attended journalism school at a time when experts were grappling with online writing, new media and what some people like to call “the commentariat” (that’s you, for the record). Second, I’m new enough at the magazine to admit when we got something wrong. About two years ago, I was just another reader of Newsweek.com. Now that I’m on the other side, hopefully I can provide answers to the questions you have. Ask away. My e-mail is plastered all over this blog, but just in case, I’m at kurt.soller@newsweek.com. For years, newspapers have had what they call ombudsmen or public editors. But call me a blogger. These days, at least, I’ll count it as a term of affection.

Though, I’ll confess that I’m relatively new to blogging, especially when it comes to professional – not personal – efforts. So I hope that we can figure out this together. In short time, I’ll be introducing regularly-scheduled features that will appear on the blog each week. Look forward to audio and video with your favorite NEWSWEEK reporters, analysis from other journalists out there in media land, or links to the things that our friends over at Gawker have to say about the death of the newsweekly. But for now, we’ll start with the bedrock of this blog – creating community by figuring out what you all want to talk about. I’m open to anything, for now, so tell me if you think I’m taking things too far – or not far enough.

Since I’m new to blogging, it’s convenient that the veteran blogger Andrew Sullivan over at the Atlantic Monthly just wrote an essay entitled “Why I Blog.” You can read the whole thing for yourself, but if you’re sick of my chatter, here is his take that I've adopted on why this blog is necessary:

“A blog bobs on the ocean but has its anchorage in waters deeper than those print media is technologically able to exploit. It disempowers the writer to that extent, of course. The blogger can get away with less and afford fewer pretensions of authority. He is – more than any writer of the past – a node among nodes, connected but unfinished without the links and the comments and the track-backs that make the blogosphere, at its best, a conversation, rather than a production.

… Some e-mailers, unsurprisingly, know more about a subject than the blogger does. They will send links, stories, and facts, challenging the blogger’s view of the world, sometimes outright refuting it, but more frequently adding context and nuance and complexity to an idea. The role of a blogger is not to defend against this but to embrace it. He is similar in this way to the host of a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate.”

OK, so maybe that’s a little pretentious. But you get the point. Let’s start talking.

Talk to you soon,
Kurt