It may be unique to my generation or it may be that I live in my own special little realm of super geekdom, but I exist in a hyper-saturated world of news and information. I listen to NPR and BBC World News. I read RSS feeds from 16 different local, state, national and international news sources daily (including my favorite). I subscribe to trade journals for seven different trades (seriously, they are: health, education, green building, public management, scientific research, business and technology). I even read the local newspaper. In short, I know what's going on in the world around me. And it never ceases to amaze me when I encounter an otherwise perfectly intelligent person who hasn't got a clue what's going on, especially when they have every reason in the world to need to know.
If you have a reason to be reading a grant writing blog, you must keep up with current events. Knowing what is making headlines today is the only way you're going to know where the money will be tomorrow, next week, next month and in the coming years. As I've explained in numerous posts, grants are born to solve the problems getting attention (i.e. making headlines). If you don't know what's on today's front page, you're going to miss the boat on tomorrow's funding.
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