August 20, 2003

A Special Message from the Desk Of John Hood: I’m writing today to alert you and other regular visitors to the John Locke Foundation’s web sites — including Carolina Journal Online, NorthCarolinaAtWar.com, and our main JLF site — about a new Internet feature we unveiled in late August: a weblog on public policy issues of interest to North Carolinians. “Blogs,” as they have come to be known, are an increasingly popular way for a variety of individuals and organizations to communicate with each other, to react to breaking news, and to discuss and debate issues that matter most to them.

Some bloggers are affiliated with newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, or established Internet news operations. Others are independent commentators, often coming up issues from a hard-to-pigeonhole viewpoint or contributing some information to the discussion that hasn’t already been reported in the mainstream media. Although we have had a major presence on the Internet for many years, and have specialized in timely news and commentary on our Carolina Journal site, we’ve left the blogging to others — until now.

“The Locker Room” is our new offering in the genre. It features short bits of news, analysis, and commentary about the issues of the day. Contributors include John Locke Foundation staff, affiliated fellows and scholars around North Carolina and beyond, and others we hope can provide a unique take on the public policy subjects in which JLF and its readers have a strong interest. Already, posts in the “The Locker Room” have examined Gov. Mike Easley’s veto of a mortgage-lending bill, a flawed study of air quality in North Carolina, and a few more cents worth on the Nickel and Dimed controversy at UNC-Chapel Hill. Expect lots more in the coming days.

Please feel free to join us in “The Locker Room” whenever you get a spare moment. It’ll be updated continuously, so visit any time of the day or night and you’ll probably see some new material. Thanks for visiting our other web sites, and please let us know if you have some questions, comments, or suggestions about how we can make JLF’s strong presence on the Web even better.

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