Well, Happy and Safe

I’m Kurt Greenbaum, formerly editorial director of RealTimeSTL.com and regional editor in St. Louis for Patch.com. I also previously worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where I was the online news director, social media director and an assistant city editor. Now, I have a small media consulting firm called Greentree MediaWorks and I’m the communications director for Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. I blog for Greentree MediaWorks over here.

This is the second blog I’ve set up at this domain. The first was so thoroughly hacked I decided to start fresh, with a new topic. Apologies to anyone who followed the old one. The domain remains the same, but the topic changed into something that was more a diversion for myself, a chance to focus on a different topic that’s of interest perhaps only to me. And it allowed me to document more fully a project I last truly focused on in 1994-95.

The title of this blog, as you will see, is derived from the letters of Frank D. “Babe” Mauro, a 20-year-old who was killed four days before the end of World War II in Europe. He was one of my mother’s older brothers, but she never really knew him; the telegram announcing his death arrived at my grandmother’s home on my mother’s fifth birthday.

But more on this story as it unfolds on the blog.

And I won’t rule out the possibility that I’ll blog about anything else that strikes my fancy!

More about my background

I’ve been involved in online journalism since 1996, working with newsrooms to help them adapt to new media in online publishing, as well as in the use of social media. I’ve been a journalist since 1983, working as an intern for the Lancaster New Era in Lancaster, Pa.; the Chicago Tribune; and as a reporter and editor at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale.

I was editor of an online start-up called dbusiness.com (later called localbusiness.com). I think there’s still a site out there with those domains, but it’s nothing like the one I worked on.

I have been interested in social media for a long time; my interest began long before anyone started calling it “social media.” As a member of the team that got the Sun-Sentinel online for the first time (on AOL, no less!), I’ve always been most interested in the reader interaction that the web facilitates. Hence, the position at the Post-Dispatch.

My wife is an amazing person who has supported me mightily through thick and thin and my two children are the pride of my life.

I hope I’ll learn a lot from anyone who reads this blog. And thanks to Marijean Jaggers at Jaggers Communications (and the STLWorkingMom, for her encouragement to get this up and running.