From hard news to light fare
Editor’s note: Amy Klamper is a Spokane resident and freelance writer.
As a freelancer I cover a medley of subjects, everything from defense spending and military technology to urban living and how to make biscotti. The one constant in my daily routine is reuters.com. I’d like to say I prefer this British wire service to U.S. mainstays like CNN or Matt Drudge because of the quality of its content, but it has more to do with the site’s subtle use of the color orange.
Defense related
My next stop is the Defense Department’s ominously drab portal, defenselink.mil, where I scroll through press transcripts and browse new weapons contracts. Then, when I want to know what’s really going on, I head to the Danger Room at blog.wired.com/defense, Wired’s pithy diatribe on everything from troubled Pentagon weapons programs and sci-fi movies to cyber-security gossip and recruiting woes.
From there I usually check in with aljazeera.com, and when I really want to add fodder to my FBI file (fbifile.com/fbi-doihave.html) I browse my favorite government secrecy sites, thememoryhole.org and George Washington University’s award-winning archive of declassified government documents at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv. What’s there all came from requests through the Freedom of Information Act.
When I’m in the mood for inside dirt on government waste, fraud and abuse, I check out the blog at Project on Government Oversight, pogoblog.typepad.com, a beacon for whistle-blowers everywhere.
Light-hearted fare
At this point, after muscling through the government secrecy and corruption, I feel somewhat disillusioned/paranoid/ distressed, so I shift gears and take solace in my favorite food, fashion and style sites.
As a new and largely housebound parent who works from home, I find staying in touch with popular trends somewhat overwhelming, so I get my daily dose of pop-culture news and weirdness at boingboing.net.
When I want recipes I do a random Google search on ingredients (I know, how pedestrian), though I appreciate the American-in-Paris vibe of davidlebovitz.com, not to mention his obsession with chocolate. For local fare I get the inside scoop on restaurant happenings, alt-gardening and, once again, chocolate, from chef David Blaine, who cooks at Latah Bistro, at thebackkitchen.blogspot.com.
Now that I’m writing a regular feature on urban style, I find the enigmatic metrospokane.typepad.com an invaluable resource on downtown development.
Fashion
Several times a week I make a feeble attempt to keep up with fashion, often loitering at birdfight.com, a refreshingly simple style guide that links to sales and other online finds. Birdfight also helps me muster the fashion moxie needed to visit thesartorialist.com, though when the pics of haute couture from New York and Milan start giving me hives, I go slumming at www.hel-looks.com.
I find this vivid photo diary of Helsinki street fashion inspiring, often leading to a fit of impulsive “social shopping” at wists.com/emptyspool. There I pile on to my personal wish list, bookmaking items from multiple sites in a single location and sharing my list with other users (the social part).
Humor
For humor I turn to the Nietzsche Family Circus at losanjealous.com/nfc, which randomly pairs a daily Family Circus comic with a Friedrich Nietzsche quote. Good stuff. I also Google my byline at least once a week (yes, I admit it). Then I get over myself at wefeelfine.org, a groundbreaking application of technology and a living, breathing, growing work of Web art that tracks the emotional states of bloggers the world over. Enjoy!