Sunday, December 04, 2005

Changing horses

After 16 years at The Boston Globe, my desire to do something different coincided with an attractive "voluntary separation" package, and I have moved on from the daily newspaper business. The industry is in considerable tumult right now, as any review of a media website like Romanesko will attest (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45), and as I acknowledged in a set-up piece for Emily Rooney's "Greater Boston" program on public television WGBH http://www.greaterboston.tv/ last week. I'm going to continue to write freelance, contribute to this weblog, and my book -- "This Land: The Battle Over Sprawl and the Future of America" (Johns Hopkins University Press) http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/8961.html -- comes out in the spring. My new day job is doing research and writing as smart growth education director at the Office for Commonwealth Development, the state agency in Massachusetts coordinating housing, transportation, environment and energy. I wouldn't have predicted this coming out of journalism school twenty years ago, but there are obviously many more formats and forums today where this voice can be heard.