Randy Cassingham's Blog

This Just In got its first major press coverage this week -- with a nice nod in Newsweek's 11 November issue, in their new "Cyberscope" section. There has been plenty of notice from smaller publications, but Newsweek is certainly a big fish.

They dub TJI "All the News That's Not Fit to Print". Inexplicably, they say it started in 1986. Maybe: that's when I started posting clippings on my bulletin board at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Unfortunately they refused to publish my letter to the editor about the notice:

I appreciate the Cyberscope mention of "This Just In", my weekly online column of bizarre news (Nov. 14), but I wonder why you made no attempt to contact me first to check your facts. The column has been on the Net for four months, not the eight years you said, which gives a lot more meaning to the mention that it circulates to 34 countries (now 40 and counting, by the way). And while I may be an "infomonger," I must take exception to your titling me the "list administrator." Surely Newsweek, of all organizations, knows news doesn't write itself; I am the column's author.

Despite Newsweek's gigantic circulation, the write-up "only" resulted in a few thousand new subscriptions -- few people are online in 1994....