I’ve been lucky enough to work as a journalist all my life. I say “lucky,” because after I graduated college I spent six months working second shift in a factory. Journalism is easier.I’ve written on government, politics, economic development, farm policy and organic faming, urban design, education and general-assignment topics for newspapers and magazines. Late career, it's been mostly tech (Epic Systems is a speciality) and ag stuff. If I still wrote regularly on politics, my most frequent question to politicians would be: “Are you freaking serious?My writing has appeared in the Wisconsin Examiner, Milwaukee Magazine, Wisconsin Interest magazine, Madison Magazine, WisBusiness.com, Tone Madison, The Milkweed and Isthmus, where I worked for many years as an editor.You can see my archive of recent stories at: http://meisenstories.net. For older stories, search the Isthmus website. Note that links to some of the non-Isthmus stories are broken. Yup, that’s a bummer. My really old stories--for the West Bend News, The Capital Times and the Janesville Gazette (where I had a cup of coffee), may be mouldering somewhere in bound newspaper volumes.