Blogging

Tim Bray, Sun Microsystem's technology director asks a great question:

Uh, why is the mainstream press so incredibly interested in this people-fired-for-blogging story? Is this happening to a lot of people? No. Are a lot of people blogging? Yes. Has it happened to anyone senior enough to impact the company involved? No. Are senior people blogging? Yes. If I were cynical and paranoid, I’d suspect that the media running these stories were frightened of something.

It is a rather odd obsession... especially in light of Tim's list of 10 reasons why blogging is great for your career.

 This graph makes me nervous for some reason. Wouldn't it be weird if suddenly, everyone took a look at their weblogs and said, "well... I guess that's enough of that..." Well... how else could the bubble burst?

According to a friendly film reviewer who I spoke with in the SXSW press suite,  I am the only blogger at SXSW with press credentials. Now, on the one hand, that  means absolutely nothing other than I got a free badge, and have access to the press room. However, on the other hand, I know that nothing is truly free in this world. If I am in fact the only credentialed blogger at the conference, then I feel it’s my responsibility (for better, or for worse) to leave the SXSW people with the impression that bloggers are a legitimate and valuable part of the press.

 

Thus, the mission I seem to have accepted is to ensure that more bloggers get press credentials next year. Now, this means I will have to ::shudder:: produce something that will be considered legit journalism. And by Journalism, I don’t mean reporting what happened; rather, I see journalism as an institution dedicated to enriching the public’s understanding of events which they are unable to see with their own eyes. If I was only interested in reporting who/what/when/where/why, I’d simply cut and paste some press releases. That said, there are a few big problems…

 

What valuable, and unique function can I serve when nearly 60 percent of conference goers are going to blog it anyway? Taking detailed notes of the sessions at the conference simply doesn’t seem to cut it. The conference sessions already produce more than one set of detailed notes. Pretending to be a reporter for wired might get me a good grade in a journalism class, however the reporters for wired, and the multitude of other tech publications present already fill that niche… and clearly they will do it better than I.

And I say, "god damn straight", Mr. Anderson. Thank you for reminding we Progressives of our collective responsibility to support each other.... As for the rest of you, get you're butts over to ISOU and read his reminder. If you follow the link, all of your wishes -- and I mean all of them -- will come true. But if you don't follow the link, an angel will get set on fire. Don't say I didn't warn you.

By Doug Ireland -- March 11, 2005

A new group baptized the Online Coalition is organizing a fight against the proposed Federal Election Commission crackdown on the political liberties of bloggers under the McCain-Feingold Act--a censorious outrage which was the subject of an earlier DIRELAND cry of alarm. The envisioned crackdown would, as we wrote when the story broke, change politics as practiced on the 'net as we know it.

The first step of this fight-back is an open letter to the chairman of the FEC from bloggers -- if you have a blog or are a journalist, sign on by clicking here (where you can also see the roster of bloggers and scribes from all political points of view who've signed on already.) The letter to the FEC says in part:

"As bipartisan members of the online journalism, blogging, and advertising community, we ask that you grant blogs and online publications the same consideration and protection as broadcast media, newspapers, or periodicals by clearly including them under the Federal Election Commission’s 'media exemption' rule.

From USNEWS:

Convinced that Internet weblogs, or blogs, helped defeat Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and out Dan Rather 's bad reporting on President Bush 's National Guard duty, House and Senate Republicans are scrambling to put them on their government Web pages. "Senators want them even though they don't know what they are," says a strategist helping several GOP senators develop the chat and news pages.

Its an honor to be trusted with the responsibility of building the new American Street. Then again, all I've gotten accomplished tonight was laying a three-column layout from the ground up. It looks like crap right now, because you heathens don't understand the difficulty of CSS. You see, there is victory in getting three bars to behave properly across multiple browsers, and to the same time be css/xhtml valid.

Oh, check a page I did today that looks good. I wouldn't want you to think I suck at building websites. (I didn't design this page; I got a jpeg from a designer a mirrored it down to the margin, letter-spacing, font-weight, specific color, ratios, ect... ... its a lot harder than it sounds.)

On the left is a graph that was created by Steve Broback at the Business Blog Summit. It compares the alexa traffic rankings of Autoblog to the hardcore, and long running motertrend.com.

What does this graph prove? It depends... some would like to think its more evidence of the blog's business potential. Personally, I'm skeptical, because for one thing, most businesses don't have anything interesting to blog about (thus, nobody will read their blog).

However, I do think think there are certain industries that could capitalize effectively on weblogs. In particular, certain professionals, such as dieticians, personal trainers, and consultants have a unique opprotunity to break through google by way of weblog. More importantly however, a good weblog that is directed towards the interests of potential customers (read posting daily fitness tips) might have an exponential effect on traffifc to their site.

However, back to my skepticism: a lot of businesses who might be interested in using weblogs usually miss one key point: blogs don't perform magic tricks. You have to update them, and your content better be worth reading. More notes later, I'm running late to a sexy party at Austin's Hole in the Wall.