The proof of the blogging is in the reading — Or, why I just wrote a check for $348 to renew my Financial Times subscription

In the spirit of the global financial downturn, my crack accounting team here at boj World Headquarters™® is scrutinizing every expense with gimlet-eyed green-eyeshaded grimness, looking to cut costs and keep the bottom line healthy.

In that regard, subscriptions to the many newspapers and magazines I receive are being reexamined with an eye toward their 1) enjoyability [ai, me realizes this is a variation on the dreadful "drinkability"-themed Bud Light commercials, but what can you do, you take what's useful and try to outrun the nose-wrinkling smell...] and 2) utility as regards how much grist they furnish for the yawning maw of the bookofjoe mill, which runs 24/7/365, even while I sleep.

So when the Financial Times renewal form came last week, rather than automatically write the check as in flush years gone by, I put it aside for deeper analysis.

That just happened, in the following fashion: I went back through last month's (April 2009) posts and discovered at least 16 directly attributable to the FT (among them the Homer Simpson Talking Fridge Guard pictured up, from Jonathan Margolis's always entertaining "technopolis" column).

I never, ever, would have run across these items of interest if I didn't read the FT regularly in its dead tree incarnation, as many if not most of the items I featured don't appear online, as they oftimes come from the "How To Spend It" magazine supplement which, for all practical purposes for a reader here in the U.S., doesn't exist online due to the FT's dreadful website.

But hey, that's their problem, not mine.

Honestly, before I actually looked at each of the 240 April posts I'd have guessed perhaps four or five came from the FT.

But 16?

Book it, Danno.