Washblog

Looking for new blood

It has been a great first year with the scoop version of Washblog, and I think we are closing in on 500 registered users. We got a great core of an online community and it is growing. I bet few readers now are even aware of an old site.

In the tradition of DailyKos, Washblog has promoted folks to be 'front pagers' - people who get to see their diary posted directly to the front page, instead of the column on the right.

These initial front pagers really helped keep the blog fresh and debate vibrant, especially earlier in the year when some serious transition was going on with myself.

Now, I think we can say that the transition period is over, so we are looking for some new bloggers to have a share of the pulpit. This time around, we have worked on some criteria as a guideline for prospective front pagers. If you are interested, send an e-mail to info@washblog.com.

Update [2006-11-17 3:53:56 by Brian]: Some folks who had front-page abilities lost them recently - that was my screw-up and not intended. The long and the short of it: I am working on fixing it so those who had it will get it back.

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I haven't minded having a few things I've written front-paged, and I have that recommend button (have no idea what it really does).

I guess I come at this a little differently, and my feeling is that regardless of where you stand on copyright and "information wanting to be free", the role of the editor is not dead. Having been actually published, I am here to testify that there is nothing facetious in the aphorism "the most important thing an editor says is 'no'"; and a good editor is worth their weight in dog food (not gold, sorry); maybe even New York steaks unless you're veg.

I've appreciated Noemie's criticisms. I would be happy to serve on an editorial board, but I sure as heck wouldn't want my stuff automatically front paged. Who the heck would?

by m3047 on Wed Nov 15, 2006 at 07:45:46 PM PST

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Right, people who have the ability to front-page their own stories stories, choose whether to do so or not.

I'm really happy that Brian is doing this.  It's a key time, I think, to make further improvements in this forum.  

I see Washblog as having a real role to play -- along with many of the other blogs in the region and other alternative media outlets -- as we head along "The Road to 2008" (to steal a phrase from Daniel Kirkdorffer and his excellent blog.)

The work that people have been doing here to sort out in public some of the voting integrity issues that Zappini and m3407 and N in Seattle and Eridani and Gentry Lange and others are engaged in here is fantastic.  Even the challenges we have seen here, when they haven't strayed into the ad hominem attack, have been valuable.  The privacy issue that m3407 in particular has kept alive.  Exposing political tricks and unethical behavior that distort the political process.  Dina's photodocumentation that helps bring what we're doing to life.   Interviews with candidates that help the public understand what they're about, dig in a little deeper.  All the work that's been done here to hold the Democratic Party and, in particular in this past election, officials within that party accountable -- particularly in relation to the Iraq War.  Arthur and Lietta Ruger and DWE and Chad have reported here on extremely important work they've done for the cause of peace.  Dlaw's criticisms and insights have played a valuable role.  Belltowner helps keep the idealists in line.  Willis did that fantastic eyewitness series on the voter disenfranchisement work of the Republican party -- the Sotelo hearings (Willis, where's your next eyewitness account!?).  It goes on -- I'm leaving out much of importance -- and probably we should do a review of highlights as an article.

I see Washblog as one forum that can help build  progressive unity across all kinds of lines -- poltical, cultural, regional, and issues -- and in that way help the movement overcome some of the fragmentation that has been like a wound in the body politic allowing the neo-con/robber baron/ military-industrial-complex/ anti-science infection to rage on in our society.  

And I think Brian is right to focus now on the role of the editorial board.  This is an evolving form that we're all engaged in helping to develop and it's defining itself now and we can continue to help that happen.

I've been thinking about the ethics issue in particular over the past week.  I just jumped into blogging and, although I've been honest in my work and have tried to be sensitive and careful about people's feelings, I can see where I've made my share of mistakes.  Right now, I'm working on what I think of as a sensitive story.  After a friend who reviewed it wrote back and said, Noemie don't publish that!  ... I compared my draft with the ethical standards of The Society of Professional Journalists and saw that I was coming up short.  Particularly, where I was lacking was having contacted people and agencies who were presented in a critical light to get their response to that criticism.  I knew this -- but it wasn't foremost in my mind.

Blogging isn't jounalism.  Very importantly, I think the lack of an obligation for bloggers to be impartial is a key contribution of the form.  We're advocates.

Most ethical standards that apply in journalism, though, I think apply to blogging -- to any writing that has the potential to spread misconception or harm people's reputations or otherwise cause hurt or harm.  Even within an opinion piece, even within the deepest "rant" -- there is an obligation to be honest, to not distort facts or the context for those facts, to back up any factual claims with documentation, to not present opinion as fact, to refrain from printing rumors or exposing people who are private individuals to unwanted attention, to be civil and respectful.  And I think there's an obligation -- maybe not an ethical obligation, but one that exists nonetheless -- to be positive and to look for solutions and betterment rather than simply to criticize.  

Anyway, standards for blogging are evolving right now and we're part of it here on Washblog.  Kinda cool....

by noemie maxwell on Thu Nov 16, 2006 at 10:03:40 AM PST

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Is everyone familiar with Slashdot interviews?

The hosts arrange an interview with someone interesting. They post an announcement. Readers post their questions as comments to the announcement. Readers moderate each others comments. The top 10 comments get answered by the interviewee.

I don't know if we quite have the critical mass to collaboratively rank questions. But it'd be fun to try.

dailyKos almost approached brilliance with the posts by Jimmy Carter. Especially the 2nd one where he replied to comments from the 1st. But on seeing the future of citizen media, kos blanched and dailyKos has never ventured there again.

Note that the Slashdot interviews have a reputation for being pretty tough.

by zappini on Thu Nov 16, 2006 at 07:59:40 PM PST

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I'm hoping that this blog does become a forum for ideas that is debated out in the open, with as much diversity we can get - geographical, cultural/ethnic, economic, gender, age, and any other subset we can think of.

The post by Kos about Libertarian Democrats comes to mind initially as a way to showcase common values to folks who normally would never consider such values as 'liberal'.  

by Brian on Thu Nov 16, 2006 at 10:47:57 PM PST

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  • I did it by Brian, 11/18/2006 08:29:44 PM PST (5.00 / 1)
    • Thanks by JulieTackett, 11/18/2006 10:19:50 PM PST (5.00 / 2)
  Brian, thank you for opportunities and the pulpit as front page military family (Military Families Speak Out) writer on Iraq invasion/occupation during these past months.  I have enjoyed both the support and the challenges from among the family that has formed at Washblog.

   I think both are needful to front pager writers.  The support helps and validates while challenges to clarify and define prevent writers from getting lazily repetitive and caught up in their own rhetoric or talking pionts. I find that comments asking questions are good, welcome and useful.  I've appreciated the opportunities  to write stories and share with other passionate bloggers during this crucial time.  It has been helpful to me as a military family with loved ones facing repeat deployments in Iraq, to participate actively among this political community.    

  The timing for transition for Washblog front pagers, makes sense given the 2006 election results.  While I'm not sure how many front pagers you are thinking will make a good mix, I am willing to step aside if it will give others their shot at having the pulpit.  So if the number of front pagers becomes finite, and it boils down to too many rather than too few, I am willing to make room by stepping aside as a front page writer.

  Is this where we make recommendations of others? For example, I can think of some others that I would like to recommend to contribute as front page writers.  

   

On the Surge in Iraq "--we have set the bar so low it's buried in the sand at this point." - Barack Obama

by Lietta Ruger on Sun Nov 19, 2006 at 02:25:07 PM PST

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Correct me if I'm wrong cause when I was invited to write for Washblog I was not under the impression that Washblog is an official organ of the state democratic party.

Brian, if you and the editorial board consider Washblog and the Democratic Party to be linked at the hip then you can vote me off the island, off the editorial board and off the front page no questions asked and no resentment from me.

I'm politically a liberal conservative first and a conservative liberal second and no party's property.

I joined the Democratic Party for the first time after the 2004 election losses - not because of acute party loyalty, but because unlike minority party members who have less important things to talk about than Iraq, I saw Demos as the biggest gun to blow up the Republican Party and fire as many bums as possible.

If I wanted to be a conformist, I would have stayed a Mormon with my own mythic version of reality.

I remain an opinionated independent and will continue to write that way. That's why I came here, to encounter opinionated independent thinkers who'd talk back to me and maybe even straighten me right out!  

If State Democratic Party generals - like Mr. Perlz - are dumb enough to insist that Iraq is nothing more than a political abstraction and no greater piece of the pie than other abstractions by which Democrats can maximize politcal power for the sake of power, then I'll start writing to fire Demos right away.

So tell me, do we have an approved thinking and a political orthodoxy here?

I hope not.

I hope that resistance to crowd control and conformity waxes white hot at this site.

I hope that eventually the site will grow a sense of humor and a wider range of things about which to blog.

The writing here with it's predominant focus on  party, precinct, past and future elections has become way too "Johnny One-Note" and acutely predictable and dull regardless of the importance of the issues being written about.

We're citizen bloggers first and foremost, not academics writing to impress peers. Yet so much of
shows up here is written for a narrow audience and seems to have a fear of disagreement, contradictive criticism or discord that writers attempt to cope by explantory exceptions and footnotes.

If KOS is the model, Washblog appears to be attempting to be a mini-KOS but only around a very narrow range of topics,

... and in such a predictable, narrowly focused and - I'll say it again - humorless fashion that the blog will get ever more boring because it has very little if any essence of vigorous and firework personality.

In my opinion that's the direction Washblog ought to take now that the elections are past.

What do we have to talk about in the future based on the abstractions upon which Washblog was apparently founded?

Primarily legislation, initiatives and candidates? Perhaps an occasional call to swarm to save some Demo office-holder who stepped in a cow pie?

Come on!

I seriously doubt that Drinking Liberally sounds like Washblog reads! Are DL sippers limited and underspoken, especially when the imbibing is supposedly liberal?

We should expand our view here beyond mere legislative politics.

"Washblog" implies a statewide blog with commentary about all things happening in the state.

Why would we not take this site to the next level and stop worrying about becoming somebody els'e mini-version?

Arthur
You sure you ain't staking too much on yer theories? Not enough common sense?

by Arthur Ruger on Sun Nov 19, 2006 at 03:20:47 PM PST

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