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Oct
9
No one reads this blog
Filed Under Blogging | 24 Comments
I just thought I would make an official announcement.
Which means that I must be the token fill in the blank when I get asked to do…whatever it is I get asked to do. Because I am telling you – honestly – no one reads this blog.
Weird, weird, weird.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:14 pm October 9th, 2007 in Blogging | 24 Comments
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Oct
9
Your taxes support 16 fed gov’t blogs; Kucinich withdraws from MI
Filed Under Blogging, Government, Ohio, Politics, WH2008 | 4 Comments
Kucinich deletes self from Michigan primary
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:50 pm October 9th, 2007 in Blogging, Government, Ohio, Politics, WH2008 | 4 Comments
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Oct
9
Calling all bloggers: The Great Debate will rage & I need your help
Filed Under Blogging, Jewish, Judaism | 4 Comments
No less than Alan Dershowitz, Milton Friedman and Allan Bloom have come before me.
Bloom:
Allan Bloom posited a conspiracy theory involving Sigmund Freud and the Manischewitz company.
Dershowitz:
The criminal lawyer Alan Dershowitz, during a debate at Harvard University, accused the latke of increasing the United States’ dependence on oil.[5]
Friedman:
An entry by the economist Milton Friedman discusses “The Latke and the Hamantash at the Fifty-Yard Line”.
And now, I’ve been called upon to argue on behalf of one of two historical shamans in the Judeo-Christian tradition:
LATKES
Or HAMANTASCH?
This is no joke, as this lengthy New York Times article will tell you. The debate comes to Cleveland on Saturday, December 8 and I’ve been asked to be a panelist and argue in favor of one of the two contenders.
The debate, according to a reference to the definitive history of the debate, The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate, has never been won.
So let’s win won for the bloggers! Who are we if not opinionated and unwaveringly sure that our side is the only side, if not the best side, to argue?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:53 pm October 9th, 2007 in Blogging, Jewish, Judaism | 4 Comments
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Oct
9
Newspapers v. blogs war declared over
Filed Under Blogging, Media | 15 Comments
Not by me, but here in a Los Angeles Times piece:
Once upon a time, newspapers wanted nothing to do with bloggers, those amateurs who opined on anything that caught their fancy, whether it was interesting, or accurate, or not.
That was then. Now newspaper websites, desperate for readers and revenue, are increasingly in cahoots with bloggers, posting and plugging them and even sharing advertising revenue.
Purists may sniff at these online liaisons but, as the print newspaper industry shrinks, they may be inevitable.
“Any new information source is a potential competitor to a local newspaper. Smart newspapers are figuring out they don’t have to fight with those competitors — they can make alliances with them,” said Robert Niles, editor of the Online Journalism Review, which is published by the USC Annenberg School for Communication.
Though, of course, leave it up to SPJ to diss the efforts, jeebus x you know who, UGH:
Scott Clark, vice president and editor of Chron.com, said readers’ blogs had expanded coverage. “Many of our readers have specialized knowledge and passions,” he said. “By adding them to our site, we tremendously expand the scope of information that we’re able to provide.”
The blurred lines make many uneasy. “There’s a lot of uninformed opinion on the Internet and not a lot of solid reporting,” said Fred Brown, vice chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics committee and a columnist at the Denver Post. A professional journalist “respects the truth and lives up to standards of ethics. Certainly that isn’t the case in the blogosphere.”
Gee, President Christie Tatum, do you really think this is the way to win back freelancers? Honest to God.
Anyway…in sum, from the LAT article:
Most bloggers are paid little, if anything, for the thousands of words they type. Teaming up with a newspaper is a way to establish credibility, said Dave Panos, the CEO of Pluck, which distributes blog content to a handful of newspaper sites, including USA Today’s, through a service called BlogBurst.
“Being picked up by the mainstream media,” he said, “is the highest form of flattery.”
Can’t add to that.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:33 pm October 9th, 2007 in Blogging, Media | 15 Comments
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Oct
9
Huffington called a “robber baron”
Filed Under Blogging, Media | 2 Comments
I wrote about how Arianna Huffington’s blog, The Huffington Post, doesn’t pay many of its bloggers a couple of weeks ago.
Now comes this letter, written to Jim Romensko, that says Huffington is a robber baron for the business tenets she uses to run the blog.
At a time when Congress is dominated by lawyers and millionaires, all talk of a minimum wage smacks of noblesse oblige … and, yet, it’s one of the very few lifelines available to the poor. After HuffPo CEO Betsy Morgan was hired away from CBS — or is she volunteering her time to raise her profile — co-founder Ken Lerer boldly asserted, “That’s not our financial model. We offer them visibility, promotion and distribution with a great company.”
If Lerer were alive 200 years ago, he might have comforted African immigrants by arguing, “Hey, how many Europeans can say they got a free trip to America? None. And, you can’t complain about the weather. There are thousands of poor crackers who would kill to have a job.”
This isn’t to say that pundits and bloggers who agree to write for the site gratis are slaves … just that they are paid slave wages … minus the free gruel. Meanwhile, Arianna gets to hang out and be photographed with her celebrity friends at swell parties and mansions. (She should share the goodie bags and table scraps with her unpaid writers.)
However, here is the real crux of the issue and why the anger at the Society of Professional Journalists is still so palpable regarding its failure to outright support the freelancers in regard to one particular case:
Little has been written, however, about how the layoffs at the Los Angeles Times — among other places — have opened the doors to the hiring of journalists willing to accept less in the way of salary and benefits, simply for the privilege of playing in the big leagues. The LAT website operation is hiring freelancers and contract players like crazy — check out the Trib’s CareerBuilder — but only if they’ll turn their backs on more than 70 years’ worth of negotiated contracts and enforced security. What, prey, will these poor saps do when they turn 40 — adjusted for age deflation — and are laid off to cut expenses … form a union?
As far as I know, there is no meaningful union representation on the Internet, for bloggers, freelancers or employees of MSM concerns that otherwise pay decent wages. In any case, thanks to HuffPo and other such operations, there aren’t enough paid employees to constitute a workforce. With so many journalists willing to work for free (and, at times, I must include myself in this number), how difficult will it be to replace agitators, organizers and annoying beggars?
Sigh.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:19 pm October 9th, 2007 in Blogging, Media | 2 Comments
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Oct
9
Sherrod, Akron & Senate defense bill “pork”
Filed Under Foreign Affairs, Government, Military, Politics | Comments Off
Not the kindest of descriptions from What’s Brewin’:
Pigs do come close to flying in the Senate’s 2008 Defense spending bill, with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, carving out $1 million for Army Missile Defense Systems Integration into the High Altitude Airship under development by Lockheed Martin in beautiful Akron.
Compared to the other “techno-pork” Bob Brewin describes, I fail to see how Brown is doing anything questionable. Aren’t there literally billions if not trillions being spent on missile defense systems? Some company in someone’s district is getting a heck of a lot more than just this $1 million.
Here’s other examples from Brewin:
Other bits of techno-pork in the bill include $3.75 million inserted by Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman, the two senators from New Mexico, my home state. The money funds the Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser at the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility at the White Sands Missile Range.
The mid-infrared laser turns out to be the most powerful in the world, and I’m proud it’s in New Mexico. But I wonder if it’s really worth an extra $3.75 million. We could take that money and send a whole mess of green chile cheeseburgers from the famed Owl Bar Café in San Antonio, N.M., to the troops in Iraq.
When is one person’s pork just part of getting something done? I’d be interested to know if our other Senator, George Voinovich has a problem with it – and if he’s got anything special in the same bill.
Otherwise, come on.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:21 pm October 9th, 2007 in Foreign Affairs, Government, Military, Politics | Comments Off
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Oct
9
“I get to impact people’s lives.”
How’s that for a loaded headline by Campaigns & Elections re: Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:31 am October 9th, 2007 in Ohio, Politics | Comments Off
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Oct
9
‘Roots News: Columbus, Toledo, Lorain, Akron
Filed Under Blogging, Elections, Government, Ohio, Politics | Comments Off
Tom has an interesting post with some good comments today regarding the influence or lack thereof of “old media” on behalf of left-leaning political candidates.
If we accept as true everything he’s written and presented there, then the presence of so much first-person reporting from Ohio’s blogs deserves far more attention that it gets right now. Cases on point:
Columbus Mayoral campaign
Now that Case Western law student Jerid Kurtz, purveyor of Buckeye State Blog, has finished his summer of first-person reportage in New Hampshire (Flickr set of photos of many presidential candidates here), he’s rounding up Columbus notables for blogger sit-downs.
Here’s his report on one such event this past weekend with the incumbent mayor and Democratic candidate for the position, Michael Coleman. Blue Bexley filed this first-person take as well. Four Columbus city council members also engaged with the group that gathered.
Why should you read their accounts? Because they aren’t a nicely finessed story based on a reporter’s notes. That finessed story has value – no question. But Jerid and Bexley’s accounts have value too, especially to voters who want more. More information, more insight, more realness.
Toledo
Lisa Renee Ward posted this thorough account of a neighborhood forum for District 5 of Toledo’s city council on her blog, Glass City Jungle. Her entry is an example of hyper-local coverage. Too hyper and too local for some people, but fantastic for those who live there and those who want to micro-target areas and need to understand what voters see that no one else is reporting.
Lorain
And more for the fun in politics, Loraine Ritchey of Word of Mouth blog writes about how pollsters try to mix it up and mix her up with their incessant calls that attempt to divine how their candidate will fare. She provides a great review of just how confusing it all can be. And whether it’s worth it (of course it is, of course it is!).
And although this heartfelt report about technical difficulties from Eric Mansfield makes me feel a wee bit sorry for “old media” – no matter how techie they get, he is absolutely hedging his bets in the news and information business by keeping up his blog. Smart guy that anchorman.
With all the options for how to find and get news you can use or that interests you, there’s really no excuse for saying you didn’t know when it comes to what’s going on in your town, or your state or country for that matter.
Cross-posted at Wide Open.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:01 am October 9th, 2007 in Blogging, Elections, Government, Ohio, Politics | Comments Off
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