We'll Miss You Sorely, BG

In the studio [Katherine Bidwell]

BG, of course, is the inimitable Brendan Greeley. Who is about to leave us. It hurts.

He’s been our chief blog strategerizer since day one, the guy with the vision that was always bigger than our nonexistent tech budget. He turned us into Flickr and del.icio.us junkies and, leading by example with his outsized personality and fast great writing, taught us all to blog. And to mine the blogosphere for ideas and people we never knew existed. And to think always and first about getting the spirit of the web onto the radio.

If you know Brendan at all, you won’t be surprised that he was reliably, um, late to our daily morning story meeting. But once there, he was our man on politics or Germany or New Orleans. Or the Army War College. He championed offbeat listener pitches and mostly persuaded us. When he didn’t, it was only because he was two weeks ahead of the rest of us. We still owe him a show on Japan.

Brendan and I almost came to blows over serial commas a few weeks after the birth of Open Source. He’s against them. I’m for them (and the venerable E. B. White, by the way, is in my corner). The good part was that it showed how much he cares about the written word. Thankfully we’ve since agreed on almost everything else about writing, and I learned quickly — as we all did — to depend on his incisive edits.

Putting your words on the air every night [Katherine Bidwell]

ALSO! and most importantly, Brendan makes us laugh. He’s a true friend, and though we’re so sad to see him go, we’re excited that he’s following his nose in life. We’re rooting for you, BG. Come back to visit. There will always be a chair — or cracked milk crate — awaiting you in the story meeting.