Last week, UMassOnline launched this blog. This week, from China, after an arduous journey, UMassOnline CEO David Gray posted this report, entitled 'China Via the Great Circle Route,' upon his arrival on the other side of the world. I hope I'm not the only person on the planet who finds this amazing!

Sure, the technology that shrinks distance and time is amazing. But what's incredible to me - and should be of interest to every person in higher education (and elsewhere) is that in the pre-blog era, UMassOnline might have issued a press release about David Gray's journey and its purpose. It would have taken days to write, edit and disseminate, few people would have read it, and it's likely it would have been largely ignored by the mainstream media. That would mean that no ordinary people with an interest in this would have been informed.

Now in the blog era, the UMassOnline blog community gets to hear the news immediately and straight from the first, best source. Gray landed, he posted, and seconds later people can read it, comment about it, and share it. That's amazing!

Schools often receive media coverage when bad things happen, of course. Meanwhile, lots of the good things going on get little attention. Universities relying on the mainstream media to report their good news stories are routinely disappointed. Now organizations can go direct with their news, too. From anywhere. Anytime. I love that!

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