denise

So when is a blog not a blog?  Or when is a blog entry not a real blog entry? 

George Clooney blogged for Huffpo yesterday or maybe he didn’t.  (the post has since been pulled down from Huffpo, here’s what it said:

George Clooney: I Am a Liberal. There, I Said It!

By George Clooney on Iraq

I am a liberal. And I make no apologies for it. Hell, I’m proud of it.

Too many people run away from the label. They whisper it like you’d
whisper "I’m a Nazi." Like it’s dirty word. But turn away from saying
"I’m a liberal" and it’s like you’re turning away from saying that
blacks should be allowed to sit in the front of the bus, that women
should be able to vote and get paid the same as a man, that McCarthy
was wrong, that Vietnam was a mistake. And that Saddam Hussein had no
ties to al-Qaeda and had nothing to do with 9/11.

This is an incredibly polarized time (wonder how that happened?).
But I find that, more and more, people are trying to find things we can
agree on. And, for me, one of the things we absolutely need to agree on
is the idea that we’re all allowed to question authority. We have to
agree that it’s not unpatriotic to hold our leaders accountable and to
speak out.

That’s one of the things that drew me to making a film about Murrow.
When you hear Murrow say, "We mustn’t confuse dissent with disloyalty"
and "We can’t defend freedom at home by deserting it at home," it’s
like he’s commenting on today’s headlines.

The fear of been criticized can be paralyzing. Just look at the way
so many Democrats caved in the run up to the war. In 2003, a lot of us
were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does
Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullshit. Which is why it
drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, "We were misled."
It makes me want to shout, "Fuck you, you weren’t misled. You were
afraid of being called unpatriotic."

Bottom line: it’s not merely our right to question our government,
it’s our duty. Whatever the consequences. We can’t demand freedom of
speech then turn around and say, But please don’t say bad things about
us. You gotta be a grown up and take your hits.

I am a liberal. Fire away.

Is the Clooney "entry" a real blog entry if it was a) created by someone other than George b) comprised of quotes pulled from various interviews George has done?  Does it matter that Clooney did not sit down, like you and I sit down, and write a blog piece?  Does it matter that it was published in the same way the other Huffpo blogs are published without a tag line indicating George did not actually write the piece?

What matters here?  The presentation? The content? The lack of transparency and/or disclosure of Huffpo?  What if the majority of the Huffpo blogs are written/created in this way, (**edited to add that Arianna has provided information regarding how her bloggers blog.  If you click that link it will take you to her post, including that update)  does it matter to you?  Does Huffpo lose crediblity or gain it?

*** Editing to add this great post by Tish and another one from Tish who links off to Michael Weiss

***Adding Arianna’s next step – isn’t the blogosphere powerful???

***Adding a link to Snead and one to Drumsnwhistles, too. (both were in my comments speaking on the topic)

***One last update, Arianna was wrong and has learned her lesson

I’d love to know what you think.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, clooney, clooneygate, huffpo, transparency

Thank goodness there was a podcast of the keynote with Dooce and Kottke.  Listening today while things were slow at work kept me from taking a nap and helped me get a lot of tedious behind the scenes chores done (I added that part in case my boss is reading).  It also gave me some time to ponder the two "business models" represented in the form of Dooce/advertising and Kottke/subscription.

I can see both sides of the coin.  I’m a Libra and I can always see both sides of the coin so that makes it tough for me to sort out how I really feel about the revenue models in general and particularly related to the two bloggers in question.

Jason said he thought Heather would do well with a subscription model and I can totally see that.  When he called her readers obsessed, he was right on target.  But if Heather is troubled by the mail now, going to a subscription model would be even tougher.  She’d have to pay Leta’s babysitter or Chuck to read the mail for her and pretend she doesn’t get any at all.  On the otherhand, why bother with subscription?  Ads on Dooce are working well, why fiddle with that?  Who cares if some dummies want to gripe about the ads, they can read the blog in an aggregator and never see the things if they are troubled. 

When Heather said that Jason would do well with ADs, I think she was on target too.  I would never pay for a subscription to Kottke.  I don’t even read his blog on a regular basis (though everyone is right, he is a great link blogger).  I do visit him several times a week, usually because someone else has linked his blog. I understand that he doesn’t really like advertising but there are an awful lot of ad models out there that will allow you to choose your advertising.  It could work. 

The part of the podcast I liked the most was when Dooce told Jason that she was troubled when he said his "experiment" didn’t work.  As a financial supporter, I can totally understand why she’d feel that way.  It bugged me that he said that, and I didn’t send him money.  I mean what DID he expect?  He got his readers to pay his salary for a year.  He even got to go on vacation (which I personally think was fine and wouldn’t have knocked him if I’d been one of his financial supporters).  What more did he want?  People to just send him more money out of the blue, for no good reason?  To be a keynote speaker at sxswi with Dooce – oh wait, he got that and still he’s saying his experiment wasn’t a success.  Dude, come up with a better way to explain how you felt about your year of blogging on someone else’s dollar.  Calling it "not a success" stinks.

Now, on a personal level, the panel with Dooce and Kottke didn’t make even a wee bit of difference in my blog life or in my work life.  Unless I get Dooced (waving to my boss just in case) I’m not going to be trying to make a living from my blog.  The ads on my blog are there as an experiment (some of you may have noticed I have blogs on almost every available blogging/journaling platform, or have at one time.  It’s all an experiment, including various types of advertising that I’ve put up and pulled down).  I’m not expecting TW to quit her job and stay home and change diapers while I eat bon-bons in the basement like Dooce.  From where I was sitting while listening to Heather and Jason, it was just fun to listen to the exchange and ponder the worlds in which they live and blog.  But, if I ever stumble upon a cool dog like Chuck, then I might have to reconsider this whole making a living from blogging thing.  Chuck is what clinched it for Heather.  I’m not sure what Kottke has that keeps people coming – oh yea, the links, he gives good links.

Technorati Tags: blogging, advertising, subscription, kottke, dooce, sxswi,