Semi Truths A highly irregular weblog dedicated to Truth, Justice, and American Cheese…!

I have been reviewing the Sorenson VA Bloggers Summit all week and I’m still not done, but it is also my honor to host the Blog Carnival this week. I am pleased to have this opportunity to highlight the great writing of all these really marvelous people. I apologize if I missed anybody that I like…

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Continuing my review of the 2006 VA Bloggers Summit…

Saturday morning began with an informal breakfast get-together at a local bagel shop. I got there early, so popped open my laptop and discovered that, sure enough, Waldo had already blogged about the day one of the conference. Man, I cannot keep up with that guy…

Panelists for the first workshop on Ethics and Blogging were Josh Wheeler, Associate Director of The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, Shaun Kenney of, well, ShaunKenney.com (“one of the oldest Virginia political blogs, focusing on the role of religion and politics in public life“), and Sorensen Institute Executive Director Sean O’Brien.

Shaun is a charismatic public speaker and after seeing him speak and talking to him briefly, I will pay more attention to his writings. I also appreciate that he came prepared with a talk and highlighted what he felt are the three earmarks of ethical blogging: Transparency (who is doing the writing), Authenticity (why is this being written), and Containment (if the first two are evident, how does the reader contain the information).

I will assume, for purposes of argument, that Shaun is referring to the political blogosphere. (There are plenty of blogs with other purposes, such as family photos. I have one of those, too). If you are reading a political blog, you assume that the author is conveying a personal point of view. Shaun’s point is that who is writing (is it an individual, a group, a paid political hack) and why they are writing (personal approbation, paid political hackery, “to change the world”) should be apparent to anyone who reads the blog so that the reader can consider this information when evaluating whether what they are reading is an honest account. (Shaun recounts the main points of his talk on his own blog.)

Insofar as I understood it, in referring to unethical blogging, Shaun was primarily talking about bloggers who have been paid for their opinion without advertising that fact. I agree that this is unethical, but I disagree with the inference that a failure to meet Shaun’s high standards somehow results in unethical blogging. I’ll get back to that point.

There was discussion of just what is a blogger. Shaun said “using blogging software does not make you a blogger”. Agreed. People blog about all sorts of things. I’ve set up a WordPress blog for my ten year old to post pictures of her kitties! Shaun is referring to a breed of blogger that writes heavily tilted political material. I think we need a new word, something combining “Blogger” and “Blow hard”. How about … Bloggard! That’s it: Shaun Kenny is a Bloggard! And by any definition, I’m a bigger Bloggard!

The session following this one was on Blogging and Journalism (I will write about that in a separate post), but that subject also came up frequently while discussing ethics. On that distinction, the statement was made simply that journalists report news, while bloggers comment on news. Josh Wheeler mentioned the website Fair Use Network.org as a resource for researching rules governing intellectual property and free expression.

The conversation then shifted to anonymous and pseudonymous blogging. Anonymous blogging referred primarily to people who post anonymous comments to websites. Shaun bans anonymous comments and many in the room agreed (some even agreeing that they would do so from now on…!) Pseudonymous blogs are those, like Semi Truths, whose author’s identity is not publicly known. Some pseudonymous bloggers, like Jaded JD, keep their public identity secret because they are political insiders who can comment more freely if their true names are not published. Others, like me, blog pseudonymously because we are simpering cowards.

I write mainly political satire. Even my occasional “serious” pieces are rife with sarcasm. “Semi” is a brand name. I blog under that name, I post comments to other sites under that name. I have created an online identity, a nihilistic smart-ass who speaks his mind and is far cleverer than I could ever be in real life. This gives me a certain freedom that I don’t enjoy on my personal site, where everybody knows who I am, the names of my kids, etc. (Which is another point: I still get the occasional lunatic email. I’m fine with whatever they have to say about “Semi”, but I don’t want these jerks to switch over to my personal site and start commenting on my family.)

Bob of Commonwealth Commonsense writes that separating anonymous from pseudonymous blogging is “a distinction without a difference“. Others point out that the Federalist Papers were written pseudonymously by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. I am quite comfortable being in that august company.

Continuing my review of the 2006 VA Bloggers Summit…

By a stroke of good fortune, at the Bloggers Summit dinner I found myself sitting next to Al Weed, our Democratic candidate for Congress against the incumbent Republican, Virgil Goode (which means, come November, all the local newspaper headlines will trumpet “Goode Weed“…)

Al and I had an interesting discussion about Diebold and the possibility of moving toward open source software for voting machines. The open source movement, like Democracy, is all about transparency. Al listened intently as I explained the view among free election advocates that using open source software to power voting machines is a bi-partisan issue because it means anyone can examine the code for irregularities. Al joked a few times that he is not technically savvy, but he asked thoughful questions and displayed a great deal of natural understanding. He is a phenomenally smart and impressive man.

The keynote address during dinner was by Jerome Anderson of MyDD.com, a political blogging pioneer whom Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos refers to as his “blogfather”. Jerome is now the internet director for Mark Warner’s Forward Together PAC. Armstrong also gave some qualified credit to bloggers for keeping national attention on the Jim Webb campaign. He added that Republican candidates are now learning to tap into the well-organized presence of evangelical bloggers. (In a recent blog entry, Armstrong points out that the Christian Coalition is also getting on the free market internet bandwagon). He sees a continuing trend of bloggers forcing national media attention on local races.

It was announced earlier that Al Weed would be hosting a post-conference reception at a local outdoor restaurant. Between speakers, Sorensen’s Executive Director Sean O’Brien read from a note handed to him that Tucker Watkins would be hosting a party in his hotel room for “conservative bloggers”. This brought good-natured hoots of derision from many in the room until Tucker sheepishly explained that of course his party was open to all bloggers…!

I found this little moment to be an unusually humorous example of a recurring lament: somehow, this summit was seen as a gathering of liberal bloggers. It’s true that Jerome Armstrong is a progressive political leader, but we also heard from Virginia’s Republican Attorney General and Lt. Governor. Vivian Paige and I talked about this later (on our way to “crashing” the conservative party) and agreed that this was just another example of how convervatives get a lot of mileage from the meme that they are somehow an oppressed minority, even though they’re actually in charge of everything important.

After the dinner, I did stop by the Biltmore for Al Weed’s reception. I thought I’d be there for just a little while, but it turned out to be the best part of the day. Blogging politics is one thing, but I really enjoyed actually talking politics with fellow travelers who are just as passionate about the subject as I am.

To everyone’s delight, Creigh Deeds stopped in and engaged in many interesting conversations. At one point, I was standing in a circle with Creigh, Vivian, Mark Brooks, Brian Patton, and several of Al Weed’s (all young and beautiful) campaign workers, engaged in a hysterical discussion of voting and civil rights. Poor Creigh had been up since 4:30 that morning and still had a 90 minute drive home, and I could see that it was extremely difficult for him to pull away from the conversation. This stuff is clearly his life’s blood. I only wish that the “conservative” bloggers had felt welcome there. Unlike some, I don’t prefer to be surrounded by those who always agree with me.

(Alton Foley claims that Tucker’s party was actually a shrewd maneuver intended to capture the “enemy” and ply us with alcohol. Nice try…)

According to a Daily Progress story , Waldo claims that the local ratio of Democratic to Republican bloggers is about two-to-one. (I was nearby during this interview, and I don’t think that Waldo actually said “Democratic” and “Republican”). Under those circumstances, it does make sense that the number of left-leaning bloggers outnumbered right-leaning bloggers at a summit in Charlottesville, but I found nothing particularly partisan about the event itself. I kept hearing rumours of a “conservative bloggers convention” that is scheduled to take place in Martinsville. As it turns out, this is apparently a misapprehension. Claire Guthrie Gastanaga heard the same rumours that I did and expressed disappointment that “the Virginia political blogosphere has allowed egos, partisan bickering and polarization to divide bloggers into those who attended the “liberal” Sorenson conference … and those who will attend a “conservative” bloggers conference.” An exchange between Alton and Claire has cleared up that misunderstanding: Blogs United, the Virginia Blogger’s Conference by bloggers for bloggers is scheduled for August 25-26 in Martinsville. This should prove to be an equally interesting experience and I hope to attend.

Continuing my review of the 2006 VA Bloggers Summit…

After the two speakers, the first actual blogging workshop was entitled Enhancing and Promoting Your Blog, led by Jon Henke and Waldo Jaquith. Waldo is the rock star of local bloggers, not just because he’s been at it since he was, like, twelve … but because he is smart and approachable. His “aw shucks, I’m just one of you” demeanor is completely genuine, but his output and influence are legendary in these here parts.

Waldo demurred to his co-presenter, Jon Henke, one of the minds behind QandO. Just to show how unhip I am, I had never heard of QandO before. While they were talking, I looked it up and discovered that Jon had written this line about Congressman William Jefferson: “Jefferson is not being judged by the color of his skin, but by the content of his refrigerator,” so I liked him immediately.

We stayed on the topic for roughly five minutes before veering off into sideline discussions, but that was just fine. This was the first opportunity we all had to speak up in a public forum, so that was to be expected. The gist of the presentation was this: content is king, and people will read your blog if you have interesting things to say. Also, the best way to get people to come check out your site is to go to their sites and add relevant comments. (Waldo added that he has only deleted comments twice, and one of those times was an obvious troll by someone just to get their URL listed on his site).

Jon runs QandO on software that he helped develop called .BLOG. Waldo uses WordPress (in fact, Waldo turned me on to WordPress for this site) and mentioned several plug-ins that he uses to keep out spam and other unwanted comments, including Bad Behavior and Spam Karma 2. For monitoring site traffic, Waldo recommends Mint (and both Jon and Waldo recommend that you stop using SiteMeter!) *

At the end of this session, I rushed to buddy up with Vivian Paige and Josh Chernila for dinner, but lost them in the crowd.