More About Bill Siroty
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| From the Concord Monitor, November 13, 2004: | ||||
Siroty, an Amherst doctor, is the man - and laptop computer- behind New Hampshire News Links, a daily political roundup used by hundreds of reporters, activists and information junkies. That following is about to get a lot bigger, and not just because of the 2008 primary. Last month, The Hotline, a Washington, D.C.-based tip sheet, recruited Siroty to feed a web-based collection of politically pertinent news. Siroty relies heavily, of course, on New Hampshire and national newspapers for his headlines. But an innate ability to birddog good stories - plus a little help from Google News - allows him to cross oceans with his links. He once included a Prague paper's profile of John Kerry, and he routinely gets e-mails from reporters in Great Britain and beyond. "Almost everything is accessible somehow, some way," he said. "Pre-internet, you sort of had to rely on TV, magazines and your local newspaper. And now if I want to, I pick up the Washington Post, the (Singapore) Straits Times." Siroty, 55, has tightly curled black hair, a round face and, on one morning last week, a fuzzy gray sweater. He lives on a dirt road near horse farms and a car repair shop, in a house he shares with his partner of 13 years, Bill Stelling. Their friends call them "The Bills," and their driveway boasts a tower of newspaper delivery boxes. "I could sort of e-mail these people and ask them questions and find out what was going on," he said. "That made it a little more interesting." One of Siroty's far-flung contacts was Chuck Todd, The Hotline's top editor. The two met at a New Hampshire debate shortly before the 2000 presidential primary. Todd was impressed with how much fun Siroty seemed to have with politics and news. "He was just sort of a source for Democratic activists that I would use," Todd said. "I found out about this little e-mail thing he was putting together." When The Hotline recently started to assemble a new website for state-level news, recruiting Siroty made perfect sense, Todd said. The site, called The Hotline Political Network, features links to news junkies like Siroty in six states: Missouri, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin and New Hampshire. Siroty isn't making any money off the site, but he hopes his Hotline deal yields enough advertisers to pay a webmaster and a student at St. Anselm College who helps weed through stories. He still sends out daily e-mails, but they no longer include the full text of each story. Instead, they direct readers to his website for links to various news outlets. Siroty starts his daily news consumption on the Boston Globe's link to the Associated Press wire, where he catches up on what happened overnight. After that, he plows through 35 newspapers, websites and blogs, looking for stories pertinent to New Hampshire politics. He'll occasionally include a stray press release or op-ed column, but Siroty is careful to link to sites known for balanced coverage of the news. Siroty isn't shy about saying he's a Democrat, but since signing on with The Hotline, he's found himself worrying a lot more about appearing biased. "When I don't put in an article, am I not putting it in because it's not readable or am I not putting it in because I don't like what it says?" he said. "Yesterday, I put John Lynch first. Today, I put (Jim) Coburn first." The last few weeks have been busy ones, with the midterm elections, a bloody stint in Iraq and various scandals and gaffes by Beltway insiders. But Siroty suspects it's nothing compared with the 2008 primary, which will yield hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stories to sort through each day. "One of my thoughts when I hear something big happening is, 'Oh that's going to be 10 more articles,' " he said. "I just wonder how I'm going to handle both (parties') campaigns." ------ End of article By MEG HECKMAN |
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More Press for NH NewsLinks... |
Good for what ails you.. "Dr. Bill Siroty, whose daily e-newsletter, New Hampshire News Links, has been required – no, essential – reading to political types and hangers-on both inside and outside New Hampshire, is in the process of setting up a Web site, nhnewslinks.com, hosted by The Hotline. It will have the same content he’s been delivering to inboxes over the years, only a different way of delivering it. For whatever it’s worth, nhnewslinks.com is already at the top of F&J’s bookmarks." (Thanks to Flotsam & Jetsam, New Hampshire Business Review, September 29, 2006) |
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