Every time I dip a toe into the reality-distortion field that is Washington, DC, it make my head spin. I was just in Washington for an API seminar, and it happened again.

Washington has the world's largest collection of special-interest spinmeisters trying to warp the political agenda.

I've become a big fan of Ze Frank -- a New York vblogger whose real name is Hosea Frank. His intense, up-close, jump-cut bursts of incredulity are always funny, but since I've spent a lot of time traveling lately (Stockholm, Brussels, Kansas City, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minneapolis, Washington) I really appreciated his rant about Delta Airlines and his riff on Minnesota, which was my home for over a decade.

I'm in Reston, Va., waiting for my turn in front of the room at the American Press Institute. The seminar is "Internet strategies for community markets." Gordon Borrell is up right now and is pointing out the inherent weakness of one-note news sites, citing Pew research that says the "yesterday market" -- the people who went online yesterday seeking local news -- is 9 percent at best, while there are many other things to do online.

He's so right.

Pew has some interesting data on Internet penetration and usage around the world, and it appears that there's a big uptick in the numbers of middle-age Web users.

Yet the myth persists of a medium dominated by young users. The young, I think, are living in mobile text messaging and -- when at home -- AIM. To connect with younger people, do we need to be more "snacky?"

I'm in Minnesota today at a workshop on digital storytelling pulled together by Nora Paul of the University of Minnesota's New Media Institute. It's a bit of old home week for me -- we're meeting at the Star Tribune. Participants include Ken Riddick, Will Tacy, Jamie Hutt and Matt Thompson, all currently at startribune.com, as well as longtime site designer Jamie Hutt, former editors Rusty Coats and myself, and various current and former competitors.

Peter Krasilovsky and Jay Small have some thoughts about local online revenue growth and the inflection point at which a web operation outsells the print operation.

I'm still catching up on good items that were posted while I was traveling. Vin Crosbie has a detailed look at who's using newspaper websites, based on data from Greg Harmon at Belden Research.

Among the key findings is that newspaper website users are growing older. We all are, of course, but this is collective data. It's not surprising; Web activity by people aged 40 to 65 has noticably surged in the last couple of years.