Most Art Scatter readers know that I work at The Oregonian, right? Editing the writers of the arts staff (and a fine band they are!) insofar as they will let me? I haven’t talked about this much directly, mainly because I didn’t want Art Scatter to be a place where people came to criticize the paper or its arts coverage. That part of things has worked out well! I’m not sure how exactly I would characterize Art Scatter, but it isn’t a newspaper kvetch site, that’s for sure.

I bring all of this up now because my assignment at the paper is changing. Starting soon, though maybe not until the first of the new year, I’ll be writing a column for The Oregonian with a significant online presence on OregonLive. I’m not exactly sure how Art Scatter will fit into this for me, but I’m hoping that the two can work together somehow, and I’m definitely hoping that you, the wisest and best blog readers in the whole dang blogosphere!, will take a peek at my posts on OregonLive from time to time. If I’m clever enough (stop that snickering!), the two should work together (that’s what links are for, after all), with more reported stuff at OregonLive and more, um, speculative and scatter-y stuff over here.

For me, this is a good change, one that I wanted, even though I’ll miss working with the arts writers and editors as closely as I have. That was really great. As I told them, I learned so much from them the past 7 years or so, so much about EVERYTHING, that I’ll never really be able to pay them back. But writing here at Art Scatter has rekindled my interest in writing in general (not to mention writing generally) and I’ll be able to do that full time now. I know. Be careful what you wish for.

But I should be able to explore and write about the cultural life of the city more directly than I have as editor. I’ll be out more, I’ll talk to more of you, and then I’ll try to report back . I’m counting on you to keep me honest, to give me suggestions and tips, to challenge me when I need it, to provide alternate (and better) descriptions and meanings of things that I have tried to figure out. Anyway, I’ll keep you, um, posted on developments with column and blog, and in the meantime, I should be building up lots of material for Art Scatter.

By the way, David Stabler has blogged about this himself, from his point of view meaning altogether too charitably, if you want to take a look.