• Subcontracting with a consultant for the USDA, that involved conducting interviews and documenting stories about developmental pressures to convert farmland.
  

• Spoke to the local high school journalism class on Career Day.

• Written op-ed pieces, ghostwriting, editing, and proofreading, and even some consulting.

•  Maintain several blogs

• Design, edit brochures

• Design, websites

In recent months, after being laid off from a financially struggling newspaper, I attempted various forms of internet writing. I love the internet, but am disillusioned with they hype given these overly-advertised websites that exploit eager writers with the claim of making money and getting published.

Often times participants are unskilled in grammar, spelling, and the simplest sentence structure, yet are thrust into the same pool with skilled but unpublished writers. Making promises that sound too good to be true, and they are, many of these writing sites have been correctly labeled, "writing mills," because writers are encouraged to crank out reams of content. The emphasis is on quantity not quality.

Writers are often schooled in turning out articles filled with 'keywords,' those buzzwords that are picked up by Google or other search engines. The goal is to satisfy search engine optimization (SEO) rather than to produce well-researched, well-written articles. The more search-engine friendly an article is, the more money the host site earns. While they share a few pennies with the originator of the article, the bottom line is to make money for the host site.

Writer pay more attention to turning out articles quickly to add up their pennies, or more accurately, fractions of pennies. There is little relevance to correct, well-researched information.

Some sites maintain their own little network of online news sites where work can be published, often at some obscure internet location where only the small network sees the articles. The bigger the site gets, however, the more likely it is to be noticed by the online community at large.

Not only are writing mills frustrating for writers, who are not paid for their work, but they lower the bar for good content on the internet. Discipline is generally lax, and often leads to plagiarism. And when incorrect information is copied, a bad situation is exacerbated. Such practices have diluted and corrupted good content on the internet to the point that research is becoming much more difficult. Where the internet once offered tremendous research potential now buries desired data beneath pages and pages of meaningless drivel.

Several internet discussions on this very topic have taken place of late, such as this one at Writer's Weekly.

 Activism, awareness, and community organizing

In 1987 I had heard about a proposal to build a new international airport, more than three times the size of O'Hare International Airport. It was actually a remake of an old idea from the 1960's. It was to be located a few miles from where I lived, a town of 2,032 people. They were largely German descendent of  a handful of original families that settled the area a century ago.

It was a farming community, much like downstate Illinois. Tar and chip roads accommodated slow-moving combines used by farmers who tended to acres and acres of corn, wheat, and soybean crops. It was not the kind of place where jets take off and land. I grew up near O'Hare and just couldn't quite imagine the folly of plopping a huge, commercial airport into a peaceful, bucolic, area that contained mostly prime and important farmland.

With curiosity and confusion accented by a minor annoyance, I attended a meeting that was supposed to explain the project. Looking back, that meeting changed my life.

The airport had been dubbed the 3rd airport, but ironically, that moniker has also been given to other regional airports in the Chicagoland area: Gary/Chicago in Gary, IN; Mitchell International in Milwaukee, WI; and Chicago/Rockford airports. With O'Hare and Midway, a new airport would be the sixth.

I set out to make some sense of what seemed to be totally illogical. I kept an open mind. I tried to learn all I could about the who, what, where, why, and how about this project.

I learned that claims of jobs and economic development disguised the real issue; it was about control of lucrative contracts, jobs for political pals, and enough clout for politicians to stay in public office to feed at the public trough for as long as they liked. Big projects reap big rewards, especially in Illinois where the pay-to-play system runs rampant, and has resulted in four governors becoming convicted felons who have served time. The latest, ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been indicted on corruption charges and was impeached from office.

I was angered by the thought of it.

So, on Aug. 2, 1988, with 13 other people who felt the same way, we established Residents United to Retain Agricultural Land (RURAL). I read the studies and met the people. We held meetings in small towns and grew the organization, passed petitions, held rallies, and did whatever it took to try to gain accountability from airport supporters, who were largely political who didn't want to be bothered with members of the public. But the media listened. We appeared in newspapers and on television -- even on CNN.

My favorite moment was when I was invited to join a panel to discuss the project on WTTW's Chicago Tonight, hosted by the late John Callaway. That was a high point, as was an invitation to meet Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Chicago opposed the project for a number of complex reasons.