How’s the Herald job going?: I’ve gotten a lot of questions like that since starting work at One Herald Square. Answer: Great. From my perspective. Don’t know about my editors’ perspective. Glad I got back into reporting. My writing and reporting skills were extremely rusty, to say the least, after years of editing. ... Got a gentle constructive criticism/mini-lecture the other day from my editor: stick to simple declarative sentences. Couldn’t believe my ears when he said that. Why? ‘Cause he was right. After years of lecturing to reporters about the need for simple declarative sentences in news stories, I had the same lecture/hint/suggestion thrown back at me, now that I’m a reporter again. But it was good to hear. As I said, my writing and reporting skills were extremely rusty. ... Ah, Hub Blog. It has definitely suffered. Now that I’m actually covering news, I have less time and desire to actually read news. The last thing I want to do before and after work is troll through news articles, looking for something to write about. Hey, that’s my job -- and I don’t exactly want to take it home with me, too. So Hub Blog output has been way down. Also, there’s an undeniable discomfort about reporting and blogging at the same time. It’s fine for opinionated columnists to rant and rave about issues, in print or online, but when you’re actually covering people and they expect you to be fair and to keep your opinions to yourself, well, you tend to clam up, rightly so, even though you have strong opinions about the people you cover. And, believe me, I often have strong opinions about some of the people and issues I cover. So ... Bottom line: I’m still trying to figure out what to do with Hub Blog. Keep it on life support? Let it slip into a permanent cyber coma? We’ll see. ...  ¶ 9:07 AM