I’m Beth Medley Bellor, new media editor at the Midland Daily News. I do other things at the News, such as edit copy and write editorials, but the bulk of my job is tending the news content of ourMidland.com. As we added the forums and blogs sites, well, they’re mine too, at least in the administrator sense.

I am not a geek. I’m an English major turned journalist who has some geeky qualities and pieces of knowledge. When I am out of my league, I’m pretty quick to say so. I’m old enough –- 42 in a few weeks -– to have learned that it’s far better to profess ignorance than to be caught redhanded with it.

This new media stuff fell to me in July 1995, when we started beta testing a bulletin board. The first incarnation of our website followed in January 1996, carefully crafted in SimpleText. Some of you have known me, online at least, since way back then when my user name was pumpkin.

That was an accident, by the way. I thought I was being prompted for a password. When I realized the error, I kept the name anyway, because I liked the Cinderella imagery and the notion that when midnight rolled around, I had to quit working. (I was wrong about that, too.)

There’s more, but it’ll keep for other days. For a snippet, here’s a list of 13 of my favorite things on the planet, in no particular order:
1) warm chocolate chip cookies

2) “24”

3) Grousehaven Lake

4) Wired magazine

5) the Detroit Red Wings, especially Henrik Zetterberg

6) Guns N’ Roses

7) Friday the 13th (the holiday, not the movie)

8)  TiVo

9) FlyLady

10) opening Christmas cards

11) Animal Crossing

12) The Onion

13) spring planting
This post originally appeared on ourMidland.com, the online home of the Midland (MI) Daily News. Republished with permission.