ok ok I am lousy. But I have been shamed back into existence and will be doing better again. I deleted ALL the old stuff to really start a new. here are some running notes on a KUOW radio show on blogging.

KUOW wanted to explore the blogging phenom - the why, what and how.
Guests:
Mickey Kaus, contributing writer at Slate magazine
Matthew Baldwin is the operator of defectiveyeti.com. He has done commentaries for Marketplace and was a frequent guest on KUOW's Rewind

Mickey was recently hired as the chief blogger for Slate. Is the promise of everydayh people making money from blogs happening?
MSNBC has for hire bloggers but they area about it. Overall not a good way to make money.

Why the word blogger?
Originally the term came from weblog meaning collection of links on a related subject, before search tools like Google. Now the term has morphed to include the more journal style weblogs we see today.

How diff is blogging than journalism?
It is a form of journalism, very immediate, there is less checking and double checking, more speculation, they rely more on the readership for leads and such

What is the value in weblogs?
One is that it is faster, the second it is distributed intelligence - much like a network of computers working together, interactive and immediate.

Is it self indulgence or democratization of journalism?
It is both. Everyone is in it for themselves but it works to create a movement that is larget than the one and communities bloom on topics and issues. It happens organically.

Do you think we have harnessed something along what the web was supposed to promise? Quicker and more intellignet data?
Yes the truth catches up to the lie muich quicker online. Blogs are faster to be corrected if a mistake was made. Much better than print. Trent lott was a great example. How did the firestorm start? There was a critical point when right wing weblogs were keeping the pot boiling and eventually it made its way into mainstream press. Conservatives from the national review turned on Locke and hit the weblogs to put the pressure on. Many politians are not savvy enuf to turn to blogs.

How did you get started in blogs? [matt] - I started reading other peoples blogs and [metafilter] and wanted to start my own. I would go to metafileter and write one good comment every day so he instead decided to tie it to his name more closely with a blog.

How much time does it take? It is more of a scratch pad for my self. I have thoughts that flicker through my mind. I go running then go write. Or at work I have word pad open, much like a journal except blogs are more disconnected. Others are putting their perspective on current events. No more work than writing emails to friends.

Do read other blogs - yes I check to see what other peiople are saying. My favorites are jonah goldberg, national review and his mothers site.

Is this just another natual outcropping of the web?
It is being touted as a new thing but remember this is what people envisioned the internet to be. Everyone has a voice , everyone has a page. Also using hyperlinks everything would be connected. But then people decided the internet was to make money - at it lost some of the communal aspects.

Everyone is able to speak but not everyone is listening, does that mattter?
It does set up a competitiion to be heard, but overall it is a good thing just to have the opportunity to be heard.

Blogs are not meant necessarily to talk to a wide audience - most of the time it is a small community. People on trips, or keeping friends and family up to date on a new baby and such. Much like the Christmas email. The information is most impactful to a core group of users.

It is more important to get the message out than to get paid for it

The lines between jounalists and public is breaking down. What happens when everyone is a journalist. How do you hand out press passes for that?

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