Category: Blogging about blogging

I noticed this morning that there have been some changes at what is currently the most popular blog out there right now (I think, at least according to technorati– it’s one of my favorite reads at least), Boing Boing. The changes are captured in this post, “Welcome to the new Boing Boing!,” from Mark Frauenfelder. I’m not so interested in the new look (though it’s nice) or the spin-off bb gadgets blog (though I like gadgets, too). I am interested though in the change in their policy about comments:

We’re also happy to be reintroducing comments to Boing Boing, a feature we reluctantly dropped a couple of years ago. At that time, we lacked the resources to manage the comments, and felt that a lousy comment system was worse than no system at all, so we pulled the plug. We’ve never felt good about it, though, because our readers’ comments added a great deal of value to the blog. To correct this, we hired a terrific community manager to oversee the conversations: Teresa Nielsen Hayden. At her own blog, Making Light, Teresa has proven herself to be a wonderfully wise and talented tender of online conversations. Teresa worked closely with our designers to develop a commenting system that supports the Boing Boing community while preventing noise from drowning out the signal. “We want this new community system to make Boing Boing even more fun and informative,” says Teresa. Under her supervision, we’re sure it will be.

And then the other thing I find interesting is the number of people that Frauenfelder thanks for “helping make it all happen.” I don’t really know how many of these folks actually make a living at Boing Boing (after all, I think all of the main writers here have other jobs of various sorts), but there is a lot of advertising on the site, and, given Boing Boing’s popularity, I would assume that putting an ad on the site isn’t cheap. They’ve got to be making money hand over fist.

Now, I’m not against writers making money, and I certainly have no problem with the success that the Boing Boing folks have had. Good for them. But I do wonder about the extent to which sites like Boing Boing (or others out there that either are profitable or that aspire to be profitable) are still characteristically “blogs.” Back in the day, Rebecca Blood wrote The Weblog Handbook that the weblog is of course written by an individual and is of course not done for money. (I’m paraphrasing here, but I’m pretty sure that’s in her book some place.) I’m sure she’s changed her mind about these things in at least some ways since blogging has obviously changed in the last 10 years.

Still, it raises a good question especially in terms of my project: to what extent is blogging still an empowering “writerly” activity when it crosses over into money making? If the exigence for the rhetorical act becomes primarily a pay check, is it still– what word should I use here?– authentic? I dunno. I always resist criticism of novelist who make a lot of money, but I guess I’m still a little more resistant to the big bucks bloggers.

Regardless, I think I’d like to interview these Boing Boing folks for the BAWS project.

This is pretty much a local (as in Michigan and in the Michigan blogosphere) story, but I thought it’d be worthwhile to post here, especially for anyone coming across the site from outside Michigan: “Senate Republicans block access to left-leaning web site.” Here are the opening paragraphs:

LANSING, Mich. — Lawmakers and staffers using the state Senate’s Internet server no longer can visit or post to a left-leaning political Web site, prompting backlash from bloggers and others who say it is blatant censorship and a violation of free speech rights.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop’s chief of staff, Matt Miner, late last week asked the secretary of the Senate to block access to http://www.bloggingformichigan.com.

Bishop spokesman Matt Marsden said Monday that the decision was made because using “state time and taxpayer money to surf sites not applicable to the jobs staff were hired to execute is not an acceptable use of state time or funds.”

Senate Republicans, however, did not block other political Web sites such as http://www.michiganliberal.com and a conservative-leaning blog, http://www.rightmichigan.com. The block came after Republicans apparently saw stories posted to the site they did not like. Marsden said Bishop’s office also is reviewing other sites that could be “overtly political in nature.”

The move and potential for blockage of other sites drew charges of censorship from Democrats, who said blogs are a legitimate method of communicating directly with the public.

“It’s a very arbitrary, unfortunate and rash decision made by the Senate Republican leader’s office,” said Senate Minority Leader Mark Schauer, D-Battle Creek, who called for Bishop to change his mind.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of talk about all this at Blogging For Michigan.

Frankly, I don’t follow political blogs that closely, and I certainly don’t follow blogs about state of Michigan politics. So all I can guess is that this particular blog has had enough readers to significantly piss off Bishop’s staff manager. It does seems to me to be one more example as to the power of blogs, but I guess that’s something that is a lot more easily assumed nowadays than it was a couple years ago.

Via TechCrunch comes this discussion, which is itself discussing an Wall Street Journal piece, “Is Blogging Ready for a Unionized Workforce?” I think the short answer is “no.”

As someone who is in a profession that is mostly not under the umbrella but who is actually in a faculty union, I have profoundly mixed feelings about unions in general and mine in particular. I don’t want to rehash all of that now, but I guess I’ll say two things, both of which I think applies to the idea of unionized bloggers. First, while I think the union for the faculty has done a good job at doing things like providing guidelines on procedures (e.g., how tenure and promotion works, a mechanism to complain about things, etc.), it doesn’t exactly reward individual achievement. Want to see smoke come out of a hard-core union person’s head? Talk about merit pay. And ultimately, I think one of the main reasons to write in blogs is individual achievement.

Second, I don’t exactly feel like I’m in a field that needs the protection of a union to prevent exploitation. I suppose this is all relative since lots of very well-paid workers have unions: airline pilots, professional athletes, etc. But when I think of people who most need unions, I think of occupations like factory workers, coal miners, truck drivers, and other performers of unpleasant work. The same is true with bloggers.

On the TechCrunch site, there’s some interesting points and discussion here, but I think the last paragraph sums up my feelings on this when it comes to the exploitation of bloggers:

As long as the supply of labor that will accept low rates exists, no amount of organization will create a marketplace that provides pay rates that are equal to that of comparable fields such as journalism. Exploitation only exists where those being paid do so because they have no alternative; bloggers have many alternatives, although most do not involve blogging itself. A fair wage is a noble cause, but one that will always be undercut as long as there are more potential writers than positions available.

And again, it raises some questions about why people blog in the first place– at least in terms of my assumptions about why people blog. In BAWS, I intend to primarily examine blog writers who are not doing it for the money; on the other hand, I suppose if one actually makes something that resembles a living, I suppose that too is a factor in considering the reasons to write, the audience one writes to, when one writes, etc.