New for March

February made up for a slow January on the writing front, as suddenly I had more verbiage-spewing opportunities than I knew what to do with:

  • As promised, I kicked off my new web column last month: This Week In The Other America is a weekly look at low-income people in the U.S. (i.e., a huge chunk of the population) and the policies that affect them. Check in every Monday afternoon for a new one, or sign up for the e-mail list or RSS feed if you have trouble remembering when Monday is. (And if, by any chance, you happen to be an assignment editor: Yes, I'm available for freelance articles on these topics.)
  • Baseball Prospectus asked me to cover a topic a bit orthogonal to my usual beat, but nonetheless interesting: The effects of MLB's attempts to squeeze more money out of licenses for fantasy baseball sites. Fantasy baseball, for those who don't know, involves picking teams of players and scoring points (and in some cases, winning money) based on their real-life stats; for those who knew this but didn't know that you needed a license for it, well, read the article.
  • Finally, with the IOC in town to evaluate New York's Olympic bid, everybody and their sister wanted the word on the latest with the proposed $1.7 billion Jets stadium. For Newsday, I did an op-ed on the lessons the Jets deal holds for Brooklyn's Nets arena plans (if that link dies, I've mirrored it here); for the Village Voice, I took a look at the growing number of obstacles standing in the Jets' way; and of course for fieldofschemes.com I followed the increasingly bizarre story day in and day out.

February is also the month when I get to pay my annual visit to Columbia professor Sandy Padwe's sports journalism class, which is always a treat - the students always have incisive questions and think hard about the topic, which is more than I can say for some professional journalists I've met. (Exceptions, you know who you are.) And I always learn a lot, too - like this time, I got to hear about the hermaphrodite track star and the vengeful traditional healer.

In other news, Jordan turned two!

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