Jan Haugland: Blasphemous Metablogging

Tucker Carlson takes on small blogger

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 22:07:58 GMT

Potomac Video store clerk Charles Williamson, 28, posted a message on his blog, Freelance Genius, Dec. 23 that described how he set up a movie rental account for MSNBC host Tucker Carlson at the MacArthur Boulevard store the day before.

"I could tell you what he and his ridiculously wasped-out female companion (wife?) rented if you really want to know," he wrote. "I won't tell you where he lives, though. That would be wrong and stupid." Williamson also joked that he wouldn't send 10,000 copies of Jon Stewart's best-selling political satire, "America (The Book)," to Carlson's home; Stewart ridiculed Carlson on "Crossfire" before the 2004 election.

Some time later, obviously having read the blog entry, Carlson came in and very angrily demanded that the blog entry be removed. The blogger complied. The end of the story, so far, is that Williamson lost his job after his employer found out about it. There may be some consolation that the blog, Freelance Genius, got a lot of referrals and traffic over this story.

Now, bloggers tend to stick together, especially when they are in conflict with big media types. But acknowledging that there are many facts about this I don't know, my opinion is that Williamson did wrong (whether it was harsh to fire him I can't really know).

A blog posting is not water-cooler gossip, it is potentially a message that can go around the world and stay visible for years to come to everybody on this planet. Bloggers should be extremely careful about what they write about their job, their employer and especially their customers.

You may note that you have never read anything on this blog about where I work. It is certainly no secret, but I don't want anyone googling for my employer, my colleagues, clients, students or customers, and then reading something controversial I write about something else (say, politics) and having this backfire on the people who send me my paycheck. If they google my name, that's fine, I stand for what I write.

Neither do I write about what happens at work. If something comes up I just have to mention in a blog posting, I would not include any details that would identify who I am writing about. I realise I am more cautious than many other bloggers, and I don't try to dictate what other bloggers should do, but I will certainly advise everyone to be very, very careful.

Clampdown on blogs in Iran as Ahmadinejad starts his own

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 23:17:58 GMT

It is getting increasingly difficult to be a blogger in Iran:

Iranian authorities are stepping up arrests and pressure on popular bloggers as part of a wider Internet clampdown launched after hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president last year, ending years of freewheeling Web access that once made Iran among the most vibrant online locales in the Middle East.

The Internet censors are busy. Their targets include sexual content, international politics, local grumbling, chat rooms and anything else that makes the Islamic leadership uneasy. Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a prominent human rights lawyer, estimates at least 50 bloggers have been detained since last year.

Unless you are the president, of course:

Iran's hardline president has started blogging, recounting childhood memories, the country's Islamic Revolution and Tehran's war with Iraq in his first entry.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Web log also requests that readers participate in an online poll asking if they think the United States and Israel are "pulling the trigger for another world war."
State-run television announced the blog's launch Sunday, urging the public to send written messages to the president through the blog's Web site www.ahmadinejad.ir.

Ahmadinejad rambles a lot. I don't think he understands the new medium very well.

Like a millionaire

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:21:33 GMT

I just noticed that my blog just had its 1,000,000th page-view since I started it, making it the 15th Salon blog to reach that milestone.

Thanks to every one of you who made that happen!

I'm really honored that people from all corners of the world actually click in here once in a while to read my musings, links and more or less well thought-out opinions.

BBC to bloggers: We are watching you!

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 04:14:07 GMT

Daniel Pearl, deputy editor of the BBC's Newsnight, has managed to write one of the most ridiculous articles on blogging in living memory, which, as we know, takes quite a bit of effort. His article has the pseudo-threatening headline "we are watching you" (I wished I made this up!), attempting to intimidate bloggers by pointing out that the high and mighty BBC staff, armed with technorati and other search tools, are actually able to read what we write about them. I am really shuddering in fear here I sit!

Now, we have to remember the context here. The common complaint, indeed the only complaint I have ever heard, is that the mainstream media doesn't listen as much as it talks. Pearl, however, flips it around completely:

The thing I find strange about all this is that often people who write blogs, or contribute to them, somehow think that they are involved in a private forum.

I would be extremely surprised if this is true. Practically every blogger I know about wants to be read. Otherwise, you write your texts in Word and store them on your private hard disk. Undoubtedly, some bloggers, especially teenagers who write livejournals for their friends, sometimes get surprised if their words get outside that sphere, but this is certainly not representative.

Pearl has an alleged example of a wannabe-unread-blogger:

I recently came across a comment claiming Jeremy disliked recording his weekly podcast. I posted a response and the blogger seemed appalled - "the BBC's watching us - spooky" was his reply. But if you write something about us on the internet surely I have every right to read it and respond - that's not spooky.

Of course we have to take Pearl's word that this even happened, but assuming this is a correct description of events, it is still a massive stretch to jump from a singular example to a generalisation (Pearl asserted this happened "often") about bloggers.

Next time a blogger complains the BBC is totally deaf to criticism, I bet this unimaginative preemptive strike will be called up to assert "oh, you bloggers complain when we respond, and also when we don't respond." Now, that is a good excuse to stay deaf!

So, what do you think? Stick it on your blog and I'll respond.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you, Daniel.

So, how about the BBC ceasing to misrepresent the term "disproportionate" in the current Hezbollah-Israeli conflict?

PS: Obviously, this BBC journalist just shares the name of his late colleague Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.

Blog audience growing

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:22:34 GMT

Yes, there are many people out there reading blogs:

The survey found that almost one in 10 Internet users are bloggers and the audience for this group of online diarists is growing. Almost four in 10 of the approximately 147 million adult Internet users in this country say they read blogs.

The press emphasises the young bloggers, who often tend to tell about their own lives and experiences.

More than half of bloggers are under age 30.

This translates to almost half being over 30.

It's not as if this is an undesirable audience for advertisers...

Microsoft takes down Chinese blogger

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 19:08:21 GMT

Rebecca MacKinnon writes that Microsoft has taken down a popular blogger:

On New Years Eve, MSN Spaces took down the popular blog written by Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti. Now all you get when you attempt to visit his blog at: http://spaces.msn.com/members/mranti/ is the error message pictured above. (You can see the Google cache of his blog up until Dec.22nd here.)

Note, his blog was TAKEN DOWN by MSN people. Not blocked by the Chinese government.

Anti is one of China’s edgiest journalistic bloggers, often pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable. (See a recent profile of him here, and an interview with Anti here.) His old blog at the U.S.-hosted Blog-city is believed to have caused the Chinese authorities to block all Blog-city blogs. In the final days of December, Anti became a vocal supporter of journalists at the Beijing Daily News who walked off the job after the top editors were fired for their increasingly daring investigative coverage, including some recent reporting on the recent police shootings of village protestors in the Southern China.

Microsoft, like Google and Yahoo, appears almost eager to help the Chinese authorities crack down on online dissent.

OSM has put the Pajamas back on

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:07:37 GMT

Open Source Media RIP. Pajamas Media is back.

We are re-assuming our identity as Pajamas Media. (Just give us a few days to sort the technical issues out.) In short, the whole experience of being caught with our pajamas down has been a bit embarrassing, but in the end, when we realized we could get our beloved name back, we were overjoyed. So a warm, hearty thanks to all of you who expressed your displeasure with our phony identity.

So how did this happen in the first place?

Funny piece, expressing some humility and self-irony, but in the end blaming the men in suits for the misery.

Seriously, I wish Charles and Roger all the best of luck with the project, despite my own negative experience of their business side. They should take comfort that this mistake was not the most disastrous an upstart could make.

Blogging and the big new media revolution

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 00:21:56 GMT

The blogosphere is, like all communities, full of self-congratulation about how great and important we are. Bjørn Stærk takes issue with the missionary zeal of bloggers. I think he's right, but I also don't care. I like blogs, I love blogging, and I think the blogosphere is great, full of blustering, error and nonsense as it is. It allows people who like to write to find an audience, maybe even beyond their closest friends. It allows people who like to read to extend their choices way beyond traditional media.

Bloggers I have learned to trust provide a filter to the gigabytes of information produced every day, so I can focus on what interests me. Even if 99% of all blogs are crap (which I don't think), the remaining 1% are fun, informative and thought-provoking. And my 1% is probably not yours.

Blogs will not take over the world. But it allows me to read the thoughts and experiences of people around the world, who didn't have to justify their words to some editorial board. In dictatorships, blogs make a big difference. Here in Norway, where freedom of speech is high but the media politically very narrow and dominated, let's face it, by total airheads, blogs have been an outlet for the only really alternative voices. Document.no, for example, is everything our newspapers aren't.

Obviously, the massive success of blogs, MSM scalps and all, has prompted some bloggers to make plans to take over the world. I am referring, of course, to Pajamas Media, or whatever they really want to call themselves. I was one of a gazillion bloggers who promoted the idea, signed up, and I shut up (very unlike me, I admit) as doubts started to rise. After all, the people behind Pajamas are bloggers and writers I love to read.

Normally, when you start up a business, you have a great idea (you hope), but struggle with advertising it to investors and customers. Pajamas Media is the opposite. They already have big megaphones, but not a friggin clue what the business idea is supposed to be.

Just after I signed up, I was told they had suffered a mail-server crash, so could I please resend everything. My first warning Pajamas' skills were not up to their hype.

It also annoyed the heck out of me that all emails were anonymous from "Pajamas Media Staff", which to me runs counter to the whole spirit of blogging.

In May, Mr Pajamas Media Staff requested data on visitor statistics and all sorts of info on my blog. I responded the same day.

On July 22, I received this email:

Pajamas Media is about to make formal offers of membership which will include payments to you. In order to compute that payment, we must know the Average Daily Visitor Statistics for your blog.

Although we have asked before, we have not yet received these statistics from you. If we do not receive them by July 26, 2005, we'll have to remove you from our lists. Please include how you estimated your statistics (Sitemeter, etc.).

I resent my information, with a rather terse reply that I had indeed sent them precisely that statistics, more than two months earlier. Had Pajamas suffered another mail-server crash, or were they just totally lacking in basic organizational skills? (No, I didn't write that.)

I received some other "insider update" emails, including one telling me that tiny unimportant blogs like mine are not going to be part of their grand plan to make loads of money on the net. No, they didn't put it exactly like that; the prose was much duller, but the message was the same.

Yes, like Ann Althouse, I have been astonished that a business consisting of so many brilliant writers produces the dullest, most uninspired promotional material known to man.

Now Pajama Media is planning a great launch party, on November 16th in New York City. The email telling me this was, to their credit, for the first time signed by a human being.

Keynote speaker for the launch of the new media empire will be Judith Miller.

Yes, that Judith Miller.

"Journalism redefined" my ass.

I am, like Bjørn, signing up with Dennis the Peasant's LINGERE Media instead.

LINGERE Media to bring together large numbers of half-assed bloggers in a half-assed venture in a half-assed attempt at creating a half-assed new media. This will be done in a half-assed manner, without funding, advertising, a business plan or a clue. We will have a nice unveiling party at the Westerville “Denny’s” on November 16, though.

Dennis has more serious criticisms of Pajamas Media, too.

The new media revolution crashing and burning will, quite ironically, be blogged.

Update: I forgot to mention that I, despite being found unworthy of Pajama's pipedream, was sent an official invitation to the grand opening ceremony in New York. As if I'd jump on a plane from Norway to listen to Judith Miller...

A blogger's guide to fight censorship

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 16:50:01 GMT

Reporters Without Borders has released a handbook for bloggers who want to protect themselves against censors.

The media watchdog said it gives people who want to set up a blog tips on how to do so, how to publicise it, as well as how to establish credibility.
It also offers advice about writing blogs from countries with tough media restrictions, such as Iran and China.
The handbook was part-funded by the French government.
Key international bloggers, experts and writers helped to produce the guidelines, such as US journalist Dan Gillmor and Canadian net censorship expert, Nart Villeneuve.
"Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure," Reporters Without Borders said on its website.
"Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest."

No wonder the powers that be want to stamp out blogging.

Survey: People blog as therapy

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 14:35:14 GMT

This is only about a subset of the blogosphere, but still interesting:

A new AOL blog survey shows most bloggers are not aspiring "cyber journalists" or political activists; they blog as a form of therapy.

According to the AOL "Blog Trends Survey," nearly 50% of bloggers say they do it because it serves as self-therapy, and one-third of bloggers who responded say they write frequently about self-help and self-esteem topics. The survey also revealed that when it comes to relieving real-life pressures or dealing with personal issues or tragedies, six times as many respondents prefer to write in their blog or read blogs written by others suffering from similar problems rather than to seek counseling from a professional.

Conversely, only 16% say they blog because they're interested in journalism; as few as 12% say they blog in order to break or stay ahead of the latest news and gossip, and a fractional 8% blog in order to expose political information.

Imagine how crazy all us bloggers had been without that therapy!

The 16th Skeptics Circle

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 15:42:47 GMT

Pay Hayes hosts the 16th Skeptics Circle, with a quality roundup of blog articles on pseudoscience, quackery and superstitions generally. Don't miss it!

Another milestone

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:53:01 GMT

Sometime yesterday the number of total page-views on this blog rounded 700,000. A sincere thinks to all my readers! Your feedback and readership makes blogging a great reward in itself.

- Nobody's talking about blogs

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 17:54:30 GMT

Blog reality check:

When I step out of the office at the end of the day and rejoin the pedestrian masses, I am quick to notice that nobody's talking about blogs. Just using the word "blog" in conversation is greeted with blank stares, or at best, a squinty "I heard something about that on the news."

We're not ready to take over the world just yet.

Blogs to take over the world (one blogger at the time)

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:07:21 GMT

WaPo columnist Joel Achenbach, who also blogs, has a hilarious article called the tail that wags the blog.

The blog is hungry. The blog will not be ignored. It is an insatiable little beast, a creature still unclassified by science -- hairy, warty, slobbering, with its own fiendish agenda. I often fantasize about killing the blog, but I worry that it will respond just like the crazed computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey": It will try to kill me first.

There is a lot of truth in this, I have to admit.

Google addresses spam blogs

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 00:10:28 GMT

From Slashdot:

"Recently, Mark Cuban of Icerocket made the accusation that Blogger is by far the worst offender when it comes to Spam Blogs. Now Google Blogger is introducing Word Verification for user comments to prevent comment spam and another feature called Flag As Objectionable where users can report blogs with questionable content. Google appears to be listening."

Spam blogs, or splogs, is a serious problem for the bloggosphere already. If we guide by developments in email, it is certainly something that needs to be stopped before it gets out of hand. Good for Google if they get serious about this.

Unlikely googling

Sat, 30 Jul 2005 16:35:56 GMT

Somebody searched for Iranian erotic magazines and found, to his disappointment, I imagine, this article.

Googling me

Sat, 23 Jul 2005 00:02:23 GMT

I'm pretty obsessed with statistics about who is reading my blog, and of course I'm keeping tabs on what Google searches lead people here.

My article about Hitler's aryan sex doll is still a hot favourite. Imagine that. Norwegian skier and nude model Invild Engesland is also attracting hits all the time. She's very popular in Finland, another skiing nation. Last I heard she had some health problems, alas.

But, I have to admit I am more happy when people come here to read debunking of 9/11 conspiracy theories, or a reader inquiring 'will india and china be next superpower?' It is a bit more satisfying, I think, to obtain readership through a written article than some risque google-friendly subject matter. But hey, I take what I get.

Somebody who was already here, using the "google me" button at the right, did a careful exploration of several articles that mentioned "french". Yeah, quite a bit of reading material there.

Not nannies gone wild

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 04:29:17 GMT

When I read Helaine Olen's NYT piece about why she fired her nanny for what she revealed about her private life in her blog, I thought the article said something far less positive about Olen than the nanny.

Now the ex-nanny fires back, on her blog of course. Olen is not looking any better.

Lesson of the day: Either be anonymous or don't disclose too much about your private life in your blog, and think twice about sharing your blog with an employer.

Via Dan Drezner.

- Bloggers need not apply

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 15:12:00 GMT

Your blog may come back to haunt you when you apply for a job. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses how applicants for an academic job left a very bad impression on the committee through their blogging.

In some cases, a Google search of the candidate's name turned up his or her blog. Other candidates told us about their Web site, even making sure we had the URL so we wouldn't fail to find it. In one case, a candidate had mentioned it in the cover letter. We felt compelled to follow up in each of those instances, and it turned out to be every bit as eye-opening as a train wreck.

Ouch.

In once of the instances, however, the applicant (in the humanities, obviously) was disqualified because he was a geek.

But the site quickly revealed that the true passion of said blogger's life was not academe at all, but the minutiae of software systems, server hardware, and other tech exotica. It's one thing to be proficient in Microsoft Office applications or HTML, but we can't afford to have our new hire ditching us to hang out in computer science after a few weeks on the job.

And, obviously, those who know a lot about software systems and servers can't possibly be proficient in the humanities.

Proper attribution

Tue, 24 May 2005 00:32:30 GMT

One of my most popular articles is Christian Debate Techniques 101, which sometimes fools people on both sides on the debate to believe it is genuine Christian fundamentalist talking points.

As I wrote, this was a rather free translation from an article on a Norwegian website, and I thought it would be amusing for an English-speaking audience, too.

In fact, that article was a translation and adaptation of an English-language article called Christian Cliches, written by Psycho Dave many years ago. The only attribution in the Norwegian version is a vague reference to "Pastor Dave," and I didn't know this was a hidden attribution of the original author. The page is part of a spoof-fundie web site, so it's perhaps understandable it wasn't directly attributed to the original author. Like my translation, the Norwegian version reads as if it encourages these tactics, as opposed to exposing them, which Dave did.

Dave contacted me about this, and has been most gracious about me using his article without attribution for this time, but I nevertheless owe him an apology. He is now listed as the original author of the list that forms the basis of the article. Thank you for a great article and sorry for "stealing" it, Dave.

Blogging not that easy after all

Sun, 15 May 2005 14:06:52 GMT

I was a bit confused when I read Daniel Drezner's excellent blog some days ago, certainly not recognizing the tone, wit and viewpoints I had come to appreciate. The explanation was that Dan had taken a blog hiatius, and outsourced the blog to David Greenberg and his wife Suzanne Nossel. Not to say anything negative about the couple, but it certainly wasn't the kind of blog I like reading.

David Greenberg retells his ordeal being thrown to the blogosphere wolves. He now has quite a bit of respect for bloggers.

How hard could blogging be? You roll out of bed, turn on your computer, scan the headlines, think up some clever analysis while brushing your teeth, type it onto your site and you're off.

But as I discovered, blogging is no longer for amateurs or the faint of heart. Blogging - if it's done well - has evolved into an all-consuming art.

All-consuming is right, even for those of us not doing it that well.

Update: From JustOneMinute:

if a history prof and successful writer is telling Times readers that blogging takes too much time, research, and talent, that is a good thing.

No kidding.

Blogging goes pro

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 22:27:04 GMT

If you're a blogger, you may want to check this out.

You image googled me

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 01:32:20 GMT

As I discovered when my traffic had a little, but notable bounce a few days back: if you do a Google image search for 'Bin Laden', a picture I used in an article I wrote on terrorism in Europe comes up quite prominently, as #3 to be exact.

Neat.

Coming soon to blogs: a spam avalanche?

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 02:31:04 GMT

Neville Hobson is worried about a growing trend in blogging: spammers are creating fake blogs en masse to be linkfarms.

Technorati CEO Dave Sifry highlights a disturbing fact:

Part of the growth of new weblogs created each day is due to an increase in spam blogs - fake blogs that are created by robots in order to foster link farms, attempted search engine optimization, or drive traffic through to advertising or affiliate sites. [...] Most of this fake blog spam comes from hosted services or from specific IP addresses. [...] Right now, about 20% of the aggregate pings Technorati receives are from spam blogs, so you won't see that in these numbers - these statistics show only "cleaned" data.

As we know, blog results are heavily favoured on search engines like Google, because the crosslinking increases the pagerank of blog pages. That is good for bloggers eager for traffic, but obviously bad guys are exploiting this potential, too. Despite the creation of the rel=nofollow tag, comment and trackback spam are continuing, and a massive spam attack can soon come to a hosted blog near you (and me!).

Search button added

Sat, 05 Mar 2005 22:36:31 GMT

I have added a Google search button to my front page allowing you (and me!) to search the contents of this blog. It's amazing what I've written about in these years...

The Google AdSense search feature allows me to search the entire www or a specific site, with radio buttons allowing you to choose. The problem is this domain contains all Salon blogs, not only Secular Blasphemy, and being the self-centered guy I am, I'd rather just search my own blog for now. I found out how to add the "inurl" feature (thanks, xian) but alas, that would apply also to full web searches, rending them pretty meaningless. I have not found a way to have both in one form!

I considered adding a second search form for the www, having the added bonus of giving me ad$ (local searches don't seem to get advertising) but that is not elegant. Anyone know if it can be done in one search form?