Recent Comments
- Mandel: Public’s frustration w/Dems will have more impact in states with “bigger Jewish populations” (4)
- Jill Zimon: Steve – thanks for the comment – I agree. Voters need to be allowed to...
- Jill Zimon: Anastasia – what you said.
- 10 Worst Places for Women to Work (4)
- Jill Zimon: @Dick thanks for commenting, no question – she is an expert in that regard.
- Jill Zimon: @Westwood – thanks for the comment – I apologize for the delay in...
- Zimon to Run as Coffee Party Candidate for County Exec and Synagogue, AJC, Ohio Bar & NASW President (10)
- Jill Zimon: Hi Steve – have a good Pesach and great to know you are reading this still.
... - steve goldberg: I almost choked on my hamentashen!
- Jill Zimon: Hi Steve – have a good Pesach and great to know you are reading this still.
- Attn ODP: Step Away From the Pre-Primary Endorsement in Brunner, Fisher matchup (3)
- Jill Zimon: Adrienne – thanks for sharing that. I guess we’ll wait and see!
- Adrienne Deckman: Here is what I wrote to the ODP, for what it is worth: I am appalled at the...
- Mandel: Public’s frustration w/Dems will have more impact in states with “bigger Jewish populations” (4)
Print This Post
Nov
24
RightyBlogs, from Dave Mastio of BlogNetNews fame, launched last month (10/15/07 according to this blog post).
In this interview, Mastio defines it as a balance to LeftyBlogs.com. I’ve never agreed with the perception that there are more lefty blogs than righty blogs, particularly based on my experience with the Carnival of Ohio Politics, but I could be wrong.
Kari Chisholm, care to comment?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:14 am November 24th, 2007 in Blogging, Ohio, Politics
Comments
13 Responses to “RightyBlogs.com”
Leave a Reply
2010 WE Magazine 101 Women Bloggers to Watch
Category Specific RSS
Pepper Pike Cleveland+ Politics Women Ohio Elections Law Jewish
by Tips and TricksNews Now
Gee. Didn’t see this coming at all!
Oh now stop, you.
stop. no. sorry. that’s one thing i won’t do.
mastio’s true intentions are now known. he’s building out conservative infrastructure on the blogs. DUH! can’t say you and others weren’t warned. keep pimping the cred of BNN and soon find out just how much good that does the left. you don’t think dave will mess with the data if it will get his side ahead at some point? dream on. he already doesn’t fairly display true comment counts and has been called on it more than once. the influence thing has been proven bunk time and time again. anyone who won’t publish the methodology (regardless of how much they cry it will help the cheaters!) is for sure suspect.
i think Kari for sure has some improving to do. a real RSS feed would be nice for one. maybe include righty blogs as well and put together some sort of bogus influence ranking – in a new “non-partisan” tool of course. i find the BNN RSS handy and i think leftyblogs could (and should) learn something from what Mastio is doing because i hate driving traffic to a clear right leaner.
i just don’t trust dave and don’t think others should either. just go look at the Newsmax banners, conservative blog scholarship offers, Pat Boone pleas to join a conservative “Parent Television Council”, and conservative book club ads he’s running on his site and tell me how non-partisan it is. apparently all of the advertisers are pretty clear where he and the site stands…
Eric must work for the Department of Pre-Crime to know that I “will mess with the data if it will get (my) side ahead at some point”. I’ve worked in journalism since 1995 and nobody has ever accused me of such a thing.
Messing with the data would destroy BNN’s credibility and with it, the viability of BNN as a commercial enterprise. Since I quit my full time job with The Virginian-Pilot to devote myself full time to expanding BNN, that would be rather self-destructive.
Eric is right that BNN’s system for counting comments is far from perfect. It is a lot better than when we started and it will keep getting better. Unfortunately, because the way blog sites and blog feeds display comments keeps changing, our system will never be perfect.
As for our ads, the idea that BNN must agree with its advertisers is one that can only appear coherent at 2 am (ahem). Most people, regardless of politics, understand that ads are about $$$$$$$$$$$ and not anything else. If MoveOn.org wants to offer me more than I am making now to buy all BNN’s ad space thru the election, the door is wide open.
The ad space on BNN is currently sold by Google and Eagle Publishing (a conservative company), but neither has exclusive rights to our space. I would gladly accept a third or fourth company with liberal leanings or no leanings.
As for Kari of Leftyblogs.com, the guy was a digital pioneer while I was still playing with ink on dead trees. I don’t know how much he has to learn from me — so far I’ve been doing a lot of learning from him.
Before BNN launched rightyblogs.com with RedState.com (owned by Eagle), I gave a lot of thought to the potential problems it would create.
Here’s the conundrum: If I launch a liberal competitor to Leftyblogs.com, I will be accused of being a conservative jerk for competing with Kari and trying to destroy his business as part of a right wing plot. If I don’t launch a liberal competitor to Leftyblogs.com, I will be (or already have been) accused of being a conservative jerk who has revealed the fact he is part of a right-wing plot.
I’d certainly welcome constructive thoughts on what BNN’s next steps should be.
Eric – I wrote stop now because this post isn’t about, OH MY GOD! LOOK WHAT DAVE MASTIO IS DOING! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!
And you know that that’s not what this post is about – you know how I blog. So you know how your comment was a jokey comment with sarcasm and my comment back was the same – I wasn’t actually saying, you stop talking. And you know that too. Don’t go all pretend on me, huh? What good is that?
I mean, why didn’t you just write the second comment the first time around in the first place? Isn’t that the point?
I’m on the record of not being sure about trusting Dave and BNN, that’s nothing new to anyone who has followed what he’s doing, just as I have – and apparently you have too.
I guess I’m not sure why you are picking on this, Eric. What you think is what many people think re: BNN – and none of that is new.
You and I both know that there isn’t any real ranking than either of us would trust or really care about – I don’t know of one anyway. I still go and vote for my blog and once in a while I’ll vote on someone else’s blog. But except for a few comments I’ve send Dave, seriously – only people who are really serious about finding the serious blogs will take the time to get to know the blogs themselves, without the ranking things.
What makes you so hot under the collar about this stuff? You know that those of us who know don’t put much stock in any of this, at least not without a ton of caveats.
In the meantime, BNN is still doing something that only Leftyblogs does too. I give them both credit.
Dave – Thanks for taking the time to comment. I know you’ve received your share of emails from me about the ranking stuff etc. so I won’t repeat myself.
I will say that I notice more right-leaning type ads and ones that seem to be cranky about Hillary etc. but in general, I don’t look at the ads.
Are you saying that in fact the folks willing to buy ads from you tend to be from the right-side, or that’s coincidental?
I don’t actually care, but am commenting on the observation.
As for BNN’s next steps, it’s a free Internet space out there – there’s room and appetite for it all. Getting oneupped sucks but isn’t it supposed to drive us to then go up one more?
Dave: nobody called you a jerk. for the record, it was about 1:30 when i left the comment – server clock must be off. those who have IM’d me late night/early morning will know that i’m no less coherent – and possibly more so – at that hour. ask redhorse.
you know? you’re right. i have no idea that you’d tinker with shit. but i have no trust that you won’t either. that’s a problem. do holler when you get that moveon.org ad running though.
you miss the point on the ads. i’m not saying you must agree with them. i AM saying that those who are spending money obviously see a clear lean or they wouldn’t be there.
you do have a conundrum. maybe the best way to deal with it is stop pretending and just go cater to the right. constructive enough?
Jill: if the reasons i’m bothered aren’t obvious i dunno if i can help to make it more clear. great question whether the wingnut ads on BNN are coincidence or not! keep hammering away! lol.
No, not very constructive Eric. Go away is a rather sad response.
Once again Eric, you’re claiming to read my mind. You just know I am pretending?
I think it is quite possible to have strong political beliefs, to be open about them and to strive to be non-partisan in running a web site. That’s one of the problems with the MSM. Newspapers and TV newsrooms are packed with folks with strong political opinions, but everybody has to pretend they don’t exist.
Jill,
As for the ads that appear on BNN, I have no idea what formula Google uses to determine what key words trigger which ads or exactly what happens in the black box. The ads that come from Eagle are from conservative advertisers, that’s Eagle’s specialty.
My point, perhaps inartfully made, is that we’re looking for more sources of ads so that we can get get the best rates.
Yeah – see – that’s getting into a lot of sausage making, which, I’m thinking, I may not be able to ignore for as long as I might like to, if I really hope to affect anything.
But it is odd – and makes you wonder, just what words do they see and how often are they showing up??
Thanks.
Eric: Well – ok – yeah, I “See” what bothers you. It bothers me too – but I guess just not to the same extent. I just, instead, discount what I think, for me, deserves to be discounted, and then I go on my way. This isn’t going to work forever, I know that, or for everyone – but there’s an awful lot of crap I already screen out. How narrow do we make our world?
“I think it is quite possible to have strong political beliefs, to be open about them and to strive to be non-partisan in running a web site.” – call me cynical (i am), but i find this literally impossible. how does one subjugate such strong beliefs even in the face of his side completely collapsing? it seems much more likely that at some point the political leanings would outweigh any desire to be non-partisan. that is if the beliefs and convictions were not utterly weak to begin with. i just don’t see the two mixing and i guess that’s the problem.
jill – you don’t discount it. you post it on your blog with the number 9.
it’s not about narrowing your world. i check wingnut sites all the time. i just don’t put their banners on my site.
listen, dave may well have the best of intentions, but it’s clear to me that his conservative bias has already gotten the best of his desire to be non-partisan. the place began as a great new comprehensive feed of all Ohio blogs. the problem i see – and have noted before – is that there is a “Must-read Conservatives” feed but no “Must-read Liberals”. There is a “Pajamas” feed and “MOB” feed, balanced I guess by “Eschatonians”. Still seems to lean way right to me and until there is more outreach to the left and a desire to seek more balance then I chalk this up to a conservative project and both ignore it and not promote it.
but that’s just me.
dave: in the interest of fairness and attempting to provide you with some constructive feedback that you seem to desire, here’s a tip. why don’t you partner with someone like Leftyblogs or bring in someone to work with you who is a liberal? absent something like this happening I fear you will continue to be seen as you are. a conservative wolf in non-partisan sheep’s clothing.
have a nice day.