As almost everyone should know by now, Brian Williams has been suspended from NBC News. His name has been dropped from their branding. What's next for him? How about blogging?
Bloggers, like me, write about whatever we want. I write mostly about me. I embed myself in every story. That's perfect for Williams, who's already been doing that. He should contact Arianna Huffington to find out how to break into blogging.
I met Arianna Huffington about 22 years ago. See how easy it is for me to roll back my memory and add something, real or imagined to my blog.
In this case it is real. She was married to Michael Huffington the Republican candidate for Congress from California's Central Coast. The district included Morro Bay where I owned a radio station combo (all true so far). I lost a lot of weight in 1990 and looked great (maybe a little exaggerated).
Congressman Huffington held a campaign event at, here I don't remember if it was one of the hotels or a public building. It was either the Inn at Morro Bay or the Community Center. My neighbor at that time, who was a bit of a political gadfly and thorn in the side of the then Mayor, told me the person to speak to was Huffington's wife.
I did speak to her or introduced myself. She said something in her heavy Greek accent which I don't remember or might not have understood. I was starting to lose my hearing even then.
My mother, who had been a widow for seven years, had recently married a man whose daughter was a Speech Pathologist. She worked with people in politics and the film industry to help improve their speech and get rid of accents. I thought I should give Mrs. Huffington her card, but I didn't have one.
Mrs. Huffington divorced her Republican husband in 1997 and flipped her politics from Conservative to Liberal. She started her online Blog, "The Huffington Post," in 2005, and sold it in 2011 for a reported $300,000,000!
I started my online Blog, The San Ramon Observer, in 2002. I called it a Newspaper at first because there was no such word as "Blog" back then. I merged it, gave it, dropped it, when I joined with Embarcadero Publishing in 2009, for nothing. No $300M, zero for the name and $25 for each news story. After a few years of covering news, I asked to be paid for my blogs. Still no $300M but now I'm up to $50 a blog.
So far I've diverted this blog completely away from Brian Williams, the original subject, and to my recollections of meeting a successful blogger, who sold her blog for millions while I am still making peanuts. You can see how this kind of roundabout way of adding real or imagined memories to stories would be perfect for Mr. Williams.
Mrs. Huffington made $300M from her blog, but even if Mr. Williams takes a cut from his current $10M a year salary, his daughter, a chip of the old block, has become very successful playing fantasy characters with unique powers. Perhaps she could sprinkle some pixie dust on her dad so he won't have to risk flying in military helicopters anymore.
