Ugh

Well, I've got a complaint about the Daily Cal, but you know how their #1 in web excellence web site is.

I wrote a letter to them mostly repeating what I said here minus the defense of my blog, hoping to blunt the attempt by Darryl Stein to discourage folks from blogging by setting pointlessly high standards (I say "pointlessly high" because blogging isn't about what Stein seems to be trying to get folks to expect). The Daily Cal decided not to publish it, instead giving room to yet another incomprehensible Jessica Chan cartoon and letting "engineer" Richard Sterling publish another long rambling piece that said exactly the same thing as his last one.

Normally I don't care when The Daily Cal snubs me, but getting more bloggers is one of the few causes that actually matters to me, and the Daily Cal ironically dissuades the blogosphere from being more sympathetic to it by discouraging its readers from joining and changing it.

posted by Beetle Aurora Drake 10/11/2005 11:54:00 AM #
Comments (6)

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Comments:

sometimes they hold back letters for bizarre space reasons. it may very well appear in friday's edition. who knows.

# posted by  Anonymous : 1:05 PM, October 11, 2005

 

the daily cal discourages blogging by writing an article that raises awareness regarding berkeley blogs? uh, sure dude. last i checked the article was titled 'blogging berkeley'. but i guess that DOES kinda sound like 'dont blog...ever'.

"The great thing about the blogosphere, however, is that it is so dynamic and can be altered by participation".

yeah man, screw that darryl stein guy. he's obviously discouraging readers from blogging.

# posted by  Anonymous : 5:12 PM, October 11, 2005

 

Apparently he discouraged you from reading, as well. The discouragement comes from the standards he's trying to impose. He's saying "A good blog is one people can go to in order to become informed on the issues." That says "hey, only folks who have the time and inclination to research issues should blog," which is simply wrong.

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 5:23 PM, October 11, 2005

 

funny, i dont see that sentence in the article.

anyways, i took his opinion to be that if you want people to read your blog, you should know what youre talking about. doesnt sound too snobby to me.

and do you really believe that someone who was thinking about starting a current events blog would really read this article and say "oh man, research? you mean, like, reading a fucking newspaper once in a while?? way too intense for me!"? if someones gonna write about big issues with the intent of having others read it, they probably care enough to read up on what theyre blogging about as it is.

and if they dont, well sorry, the blogs not worth reading. do YOU sift through asinine posts about how bush sucks just to "support the blogosphere"? god i hope not.

# posted by  Anonymous : 11:13 PM, October 11, 2005

 

You may have noticed that we don't actually have those posts.

If people are worried about making blogs that get readerships, they are going to be discouraged from starting up blogs as experiments or hobbies or toys. Stein is putting the issue out there as if the important thing is getting a readership. It's not. If you just start up your blog, you'll get the readers who are interested in how your blog. The ones who aren't interested won't bother, and everyone's happy, as long as folks don't measure their blogs in readerships.

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 12:21 AM, October 12, 2005

 

I can certainly vouch that he laboriously sifts through reams of asinine posts, namely, my blog.

# posted by  Anonymous : 3:03 PM, October 12, 2005

 

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