Ryan Fung, Collegian

You’ve probably seen him hanging around the Haigis Mall; a man about the age of your father, in his daily uniform: a worn baseball cap, a ratty T-shirt, some classic blue jeans and usually some well-loved Converse Chuck Taylors. Thomas “Tommy” Devine was a student the University of Massachusetts in the late 1970s, during its party hey day. Now, Devine is known as the “father” of the western Massachusetts blogosphere. He never did finish his degree at UMass, but still went on to become influential in the Pioneer Valley.

Devine was born in Springfield, Mass., and raised in the Pine Point neighborhood. He has moved about the country a few times to places like Texas and Florida, but has always come back.

“I always want to live in the Valley. I’ll visit and try other places out but the Pioneer Valley is the best place overall,” said Devine.

Devine’s well-known blog, “Tommy Devine’s Online Journal,” started as a zine, and later became the first western Massachusetts blog in 1998. His following has grown so much that his readers express disappointment when he doesn’t update every day.

“When I was in rehab, people were calling the police. My blog was down for two months,” said Devine.

Last October, Devine entered a rehabilitation facility for a crack-cocaine addiction. After a relationship with a younger man who introduced him to the drug, he was hooked. The addiction caused him to lose everything: his computer, his apartment and all of his money. He found himself at rock bottom after a tent party near Puffers Pond. An outreach worker met him there and guided him to rehabilitation.

As an addict, any money Devine had went to drugs. He stopped buying food. The only reason he ate was because the Amherst Survival Center (ASC) offered him a daily meal at noon free of charge.

“It’s the karma of it all. Now I’m the one preparing and serving the food there,” said Devine.

Devine’s new daily routine focuses around volunteering at the ASC every day. He said that it helps to keep him on track and reminds him what could happen to him again. After volunteering for the day, he spends his afternoon blogging in the UMass W.E.B. DuBois Library. He heads back to Northampton, Mass., via the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, and attends an Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meeting before going back to his current group home in Northampton.

As a UMass student, Devine was a journalism major. Like most journalism majors, he wrote for the Daily Collegian, contributing editorial columns and news articles. The carefree party scene at college led him off the academic track into a time when his motto was, “I never went to sleep the same day I woke up.” He never finished his degree at UMass, though he was only a semester away from graduation. Now, at his group home in Northampton, it’s lights out by 10 p.m.

“I’ve learned how to live like a ‘normal’ person,” Devine says.

In recent times, Devine has been brought to multiple journalism classes at UMass as a guest speaker on the emerging field of blogging. He makes a bit of money off blogging, usually about $150 per month through Google AdSense.

Devine admits that he has never been very career-oriented, but has always written. Later in his life, Devine took a few courses and finished his degree in journalism at Western New England College in Springfield. He says his degree has never done him any good.

Before Devine made his presence known in the online realm, he created a zine called The Baystate Objectivist with his friend Jay Libardi when they lived in Springfield in 1991. Word processing programs were new and made it possible for anyone to publish their own material. While others in the area made zines about the local punk music scene, Devine and Libardi decided they would concentrate on Springfield politics.

“The real Springfield was corrupt and sleazy and incompetent. I said, ‘Let’s write about that other Springfield,'” said Devine.

Devine and Libardi’s zine gained a lot of public attention locally. Libardi passed away in 1994, but Devine kept making his zine through 1997. Always on the cutting edge, Devine had the idea to bring his zine to the Internet in 1998.

“Whatever I do, I try to push it to the edge. I think, ‘What is the next thing?'” Devine says. “If it’s not cutting edge, I’m not really interested.”

At that time, Web sites like Blogger.com, Livejournal.com and WordPress.com didn’t exist. Devine used Yahoo.com’s Geocities to create the first form of his online blog. Once his zine went online, he could write about anything and everything due to an infinite amount of space. Around this time, his writing became more autobiographical.

His blog stands out amongst others not because it has been around for a long time, but because the content is so varied and honest. Devine will talk about anything, and he’s not embarrassed by any of it. He has chronicled his homosexuality, his political views, and even his drug-fueled downward spiral on his blog. He focuses on topics that are taboo in our society, typically viewed as shameful and hard to admit to others.

“I’m experimenting. I think in the future, people will have two personas. One; a personal one, which is kept only for a small group of people,” said Devine. “And a very large public one that is as large as you can attract people to be interested.”

Devine is aware that most people don’t know the real him. His online persona is merely an extension of his true identity. The information on there is what he wants people to see. Still, there isn’t much that he spares his audience.

Devine takes inspiration to experiment with his blog content from the large number of young people who chronicle their lives online in blogs. The 2004 Perseus survey, “The Blogging Iceberg,” found that teenagers have created the majority of blogs in the world. The survey also stated that half of bloggers are between 13 and 19 years old, and 92.5 percent of blogs were created by people under the age of 30.

“These kids are pioneering living their lives in front of an audience. I said ‘I’m not a kid, why don’t I pioneer that?'” said Devine.

“Tommy Devine’s Online Journal” features posts concerning happenings in Amherst, Northampton and Springfield. Devine takes his own pictures and sometimes shoots original video to post to the blog.

As his blog became more popular, Devine was offered opportunities in other media forms. He filled in on Dan Yorke’s television show that was on channel ABC 40, and sometimes helped out on WHYN’s “Kateri Walsh Show.” Eventually Devine was given his own radio show, “The Tommy Devine Show,” which ran on WNNZ-AM 640, but was cancelled, due to poor ratings.

“I’m really a writer; not a radio and TV person,” said Devine.

Devine is slowly putting his life back together. He keeps himself on a strict schedule so as to stay out of trouble. He’s on welfare for now and has hopes of getting his own Section 8 housing in Florence, Mass., and maybe having his own computer again too. He writes once a month for Nortampton’s “Valley Advocate,” and contributes to his blog nearly everyday. That’s fine with him though, he doesn’t think he’s good for anything else.

“To quote Bob Dylan, ‘anybody who gets up in the morning and does what they want is a success.’ And that’s what I do, I go around and I think of what’s interesting and I tell people about it and I take pictures of it,” says Devine.

Web users can check out Tommy Devine’s blog at www.tommydevine.blogspot.com.

Andrea Murray can be reached at [email protected]