Clog in the blog.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: UPFRONT

On April 27, Dan Gearino announced on his Web site that he was putting his two-year-old blog on hold "to concentrate on other, income-producing pursuits." Among them: the cover story in this month's issue (page 48). But to the woe of readers accustomed to catching his commentary on local and national events each weekday, the hiatus stretched into June, a span remarkable not only for its length but also its breadth of big news. Foremost among the stories that broke were revelations about our ex-governor and his wife that wags have dubbed Sleasleygate.

"More than once 1 found myself thinking, a la Lloyd Bridges in the movie Airplane!, 'I picked a helluva time to quit blogging," Dan says. "I take a break, and suddenly every piece of news fruit is ripe and hanging low. Still, I comforted myself with the thought that the extra time allowed me to do things like take a big swan dive into unfamiliar waters, like open-source software, and hatch moneymaking schemes. Success on both fronts--with the bonus being that 1 can now throw around words like 'binaries' with a straight face."

He still had an outlet for his views on the news: Fine Print, the column he has written for Business North Carolina since October 2007. He decided to tackle the topic of Mary Easley's contract with N.C. State this month (page 16), turning in the piece just as the affair unraveled in a series of events that, in effect, decapitated the state's largest university. What could have been, fodder for a week's worth of daily blogs turned into a nightmare of updating and rewriting something that for weeks wouldn't see print.

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"The Easley...