BNN influence rank as qualification for office
August 28th, 2008Perhaps this is going a little farther than I intended:
“Below are my qualifications … 4) Rated Georgia’s 3rd most influential Political Blogger
for Heneghan’s Dunwoody Blog.”
BNN design tweaks
August 26th, 2008Over the next few hours, there will be design tweaks to all three columns of BNN’s front pages intended to make it easier for readers to go direct to your blog without any accidental clicks on links to internal BNN pages.
In both the blogroll on the right and in BNN’s data features on the left, there will be more direct links to blog posts. The changes will be most obvious in the center column. The headlines of individual posts have always led to the post on the originating blog, but the prominence of the name of the originating blog too often caused people to click on the name — leading to a BNN index/archive for that blog instead of the blog itself.
In the new layout, the name of the blog will still lead to the internal index, but it will be in a smaller font than the headline and appear under the headline.
Local employers partying at the conventions?
August 25th, 2008The Sunlight Foundation, which does God’s work in my opinion, has a cool new tool to let anyone check which companies are sponsoring parties at the Republican and Democratic Party conventions. Just choose “host” and then stick in the name of some local employers. Bloggers can have a field day and most likely do something the local MSM won’t.
Blogs don’t have editors, do they?
August 22nd, 2008More than a few times in the last couple years, newspaper industry friends have asked, in a way suggesting that they already know the answer, whether blogging may be a fad — if it will whither away over time. One reason they come to this conclusion is they think they see blogging becoming more and more professionalized with more and more bloggers running ads and joining VC-funded groups like Pajamas Media and in the other direction, more and more MSM outlets opening themselves up to user comments and user blogging.
I think they’re wrong because too often with money or MSM cred, editors are part of the deal and then blogging loses what makes it special. Case in point happened at the VC-funded Huffington Post this week when Rachel Sklar wasn’t allowed to post her analysis of the politics behind recent changes at MSNBC.
At the same time, a guy who blogs on one of Gannett’s newspaper sites powered by Pluck has noticed that blog posts about the newspapers’ layoffs have a tendency to get deleted.
So yeah, independent blogging is here to stay because you don’t have editors stopping you from posting stories you think are important or deleting stories because they’re inconvenient.
C-SPAN, the conventions and bloggers
August 21st, 2008C-Span has launched a new site for the upcoming Democratic convention that is going to highlight selected blog posts discussing the goings on in Denver. If you are interested in getting some attention for your site, you have to submit individual posts through a form on the bottom left of the page. (GOP version is here.) Tech Crunch has a review.
Good luck and if anyone has experience on how well it works, how quickly posts get added and how much traffic comes through, please share the info in comments.
Update: One of my flaws as the editor of BNN over the last couple years is that I am nowhere near self-promoty enough. A friend of mine at the company that helped C-Span produce these sites (New Media Strategies) reminded me that BlogNetNews.com was a major resource for identifying the state-level blogs that the sites would track to find new posts about the conventions. One of the advantages that BNN provides to the blogosphere is that by compiling and tracking the most important blogs on the state and local level, we make it easier for other folks in the media to track what bloggers are saying as well.
Important Federal Election Commission blog decision
August 14th, 2008Iowa political blog by state party official didn’t violate any of the government’s unconstitutional rules.
In BNN news, if you use one of BNN’s full state feeds, it is time to switch over to feedburner. Each of the feeds is formatted like this so you don’t have to go looking: http://feeds.feedburner.com/STATENAMEbnn
Paid research on bloggers
August 13th, 2008Since I am on vacation, I haven’t put much time into researching this, so I offer it almost without comment. Their web site seems legit. Their client list names a lot of big companies including HP and Disney. If you learn anything interesting or participate, please add it to the comments or email me.
WANTED: BLOGGERS AND WRITERS. GET PAID $200 FOR 2 HOURS OF YOUR TIME.
We are currently looking for participants aged 18 to 50 years old to join a paid market research study on using the internet as a mass communications vehicle. Each participant will receive $200 for 2 hours of their time. We have several dates and times available from August 16th through August 22nd. We can schedule a time for you that works best with your schedule. Please reply to this email with your contact information if you are interested in the study. We have a few qualifying questions to ask you. If not selected for this study we will keep your information on file for future studies. Please note, this is neither a sales nor recruiting event for employment. It is merely for market research purposes and we will not contact you again as a result of your participation.
Feel free to contact me at (877) 222 2909 ext 14 for more details regarding the study. Feel free to share this email with your peers.
Thanks,
Angel Williams
Project Manager
C2 Consumer Research
205 Vernon Street, Suite A
Roseville, CA 95678
88877 222 2909 ext14
916 788 1341 fax
Going on vacation
August 7th, 2008Posting will be light. Answering emails and updating BNN sites that don’t have their own editors will be slow. We’ll be back to full speed on Monday the 18th.
Blech: Earn points for propaganda
August 7th, 2008Update: OpenLeft takes a swing at McCainiac astroturf
Hat tip to Ohio blogger Jeff Coryell for a tweet linking the latest article from The Washington Post on John McCain’s horrendously stupid practice of encouraging supporters to spread predigested talking points into comment sections all over the Internet. John, baby, this really, really sucks. You’re starting to act like the Family Research Council and MoveOn.org (who try to get their followers to submit plagiarized letters to the editor). Is that what you really want, John? Hellloooooo, Senator … this isn’t working.
This is just too rich
August 6th, 2008Update: The upstanding, real journalists at that paper in Suffolk removed all the comments taking shots at their editorial including mine that linked back to this rebuttal. I didn’t save exactly what I wrote, but it was close to: Just because you work for a newspaper doesn’t mean you’re a journalist
No they didn’t. Their web site now has two different copies of the editorial. One at the address linked below where I left my comment earlier today that now has no comments and one at this address that has the comments. Weird.
Original post: I’ve been looking for an opportunity to unload this for a long time. My friend Scott, who runs a great Hampton Roads blog, has caught a local newspaper living in lala land — arguing against free information because the only people asking are bloggers and they aren’t real journalists (apparently living in a spell-check free zone, too though I am not one to talk). For the limited of brain, what follows is a just a bit tongue in cheek:
Ahem, (Dave climbs on his high horse)
Having worked at USA Today, The Virginian-Pilot, The Detroit News and The Washington Examiner (places that use more newsprint in a week than The Suffolk News Herald uses all year) and having been published about 100 other places, I feel qualified to say that the hacks who work at a place like the News Herald aren’t REAL journalists any more than bloggers are.
