the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Referrals

Traffic to the smedley log has dwindled over the past few months. This hasn’t surprised me in the least, especially considering how little attention I’ve been paying to it since I moved in September. I’ve come to accept my dwindling share of the blogosphere since then.

All of which made a small spike in visits all the more obvious the past couple days. Two factors went into the aforementioned spike. One was Troy Worman’s generous outstanding blogs meme, which happened to include this site. While I don’t have the energy or time to create a similar list (I’m not quite sure who would have that kind of time), I did want to acknowledge the effort Troy put into it. Check out his exhaustive list, if you can. There are a bunch of good reads on it. Troy is also currently blogging at Process Geek.

The second source of increased traffic was from an even more unexpected entity. I was actually getting hits from the Wall Street Journal website, specifically the page pictured below:

Can you see it yet? Look a little closer:

While it’s kind of cool to be getting referrals from the Wall Street Journal, it’s cheapened a little when the post they link to doesn’t really have much to do with the article on their site.

“Will from Langhorne”

I was driving home shortly before 2 a.m. when I heard a vaguely familiar voice on the radio. The man on the radio was soliciting opinions on a couple of topics, not the least of which was newspapers. As the host went on I realized I was hearing the launch of Will Bunch’s next career as a talk radio host. That’s when I picked up the phone and made my first call to the “Big Talker” in ages. [Read more →]

Echoes of past idols

It was late last week that Dan Rubin announced his Inquirer blog, Blinq, was about to go dormant. I was unplugged for most of the weekend, so my reaction to this news was initially delayed by a lack of knowledge. Then it was further delayed by a lack of eloquence.

Dan Rubin has been one of my favorite local bloggers for the past couple years. (Actually, remove the word “local” from the previous sentence and you still have an accurate statement.) Ever since a blogger meetup in the spring of 2005, when Dan set out on his mission to understand the blogosphere by rubbing elbows with real-life bloggers, he’s shown a remarkable aptitude for the way of the blog. His journalistic expertise probably served him well in that research effort, somehow allowing him to break through the barrier that keeps many traditional journalists from grasping what bloggers do, and why what they do is important.

Sure, most of us (the bloggers) are completely irrelevant, but ignoring us altogether would certainly not bode well for the dead tree dinosaurs who are finally starting to adapt (in what I hope are meaningful ways). Dan plugged right in to the social tendencies of the interactive web and managed to build an actual blog brand. And his style has one quality all too rare in both traditional journalism and the blogosphere:

It’s actually interesting.

While it’s sad that the Inquirer seems willing to let that brand languish, Dan’s silver lining is that he’ll be moving on to write a local column, which I have to think is a good thing for him. When I had dreams of professional journalism earlier in my life, the title “columnist” is what I often dreamed of as the pinnacle. It’s a dream you can blame squarely on my fascination with Mike Royko’s work.

Coincidentally, having grown acquainted with Dan Rubin’s literary style over the past couple years, I can envision his columns striking a similar tone to the one I came to expect from Royko. Conversely, I also could have imagined Royko (had he lasted about ten years longer) striking a similar blogospheric tone to what Dan has struck with Blinq.

We’ll never get to find out about the latter, but the possibility of the former is wide open. Good luck Dan!

(Click here for the Philly Future round up of reactions to Blinq’s hibernation)

Explaining the silence of the left

Dan Rubin writes on why many liberal bloggers have been quiet about the ongoing warlike situation between Israel and Hezbollah (which, by default, implicates the Lebanese, though it’s nothing personal from what I hear). What I like most about his analysis is that he draws on professional experience to bring his insight to the table:

A newspaper friend calls it “The Third Rail.” Nothing I wrote in a quarter century generated the heated correspondence I attracted in two months of covering the Second Intifada from Jerusalem in 2002. All sides went after me with brickbats and honey, derision and praise – never losing focus of the need to draw my point of view closer to theirs.

No assignment I’ve encountered requires more strength and smarts – or tougher skin. …

Reading the whole post, I’m convinced that most bloggers, whatever their political stripe, don’t really have much valuable opinion to add. I don’t have much to add either, except you should read the rest of Dan’s thoughts.

Fretting over the hen in the foxhouse

Today’s golden quote is actually a couple days old. It comes from Mark Bowden, writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer, in Sunday’s paper:

How you feel about the trade-off between press freedom and national security is partly a matter of perception. The staunchest defenders of government power tend to see our leaders as honest, capable and benevolent. Skeptics are more inclined to believe them avaricious, bumbling and concerned primarily with keeping and expanding their own power.

There is truth in both views. Revealing the secret moves of our government sometimes costs us, but it also protects us. When the choice meant more, our Founding Fathers accepted the risks.

[Read more →]

Philly IMC at the UnCon

The Independent Media Center of Philadelphia has posted a video report from the Norgs Uncon. A nice snapshot of what the day was about. View (or download) it here.