The epicenter of progressive culture

Earlier this year, Newsweek magazine identified America’s top 10 dying cities, one of which was my very own Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Having lost $30 million and close to a million readers in a single year, Newsweek knows a thing or two about dying.

In response, Grand Rapids’ own Rob Bliss decided to do this, with the help of locally-based Creo Productions and about 5,000 Grand Rapidians (is that what we’re called?)…

Had to give a shout out…especially to my friends at Creo. I’ve gotten to work with them on a couple video projects and am always impressed.

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Update: Newsweek is distancing itself from the original “dying cities” story and showing some love for GR on their Facebook page. Thanks, Newsweek. We hope you don’t die either.

new site

Crashed hard drive + forgetting to back up a few key files = excuse to update your website finally. Same address as before . . .  www.benirwin.net

the thing about blogging…

Well, I did it.

I finally turned the switch on and started blogging.

With a good bit of hesitation (and procrastination), I might add. The thing is, so many blogs are little more than therapy sessions held in cyberspace—one person pouring their virtual heart out to only-Tom-Anderson-knows-who* and inviting the rest of the world to engage in a kind of verbal voyeurism. Pretty soon people begin measuring their self-worth by how many comments their latest post received or how many friends they have on their MySpace page.

This is not one of those blogs.

* Tom Anderson is the creator of MySpace. Sorry, these are the jokes. Love ‘em or hate ‘em.