Saturday, January 29, 2005

I apologise, Atrios, Kevin, Matt.

A couple of days ago, Instapundit linked to a post at Newshog and we got over 3,500 hits on that post in one day, along with dozens of comments.

I did my best to keep up with the comments and to present a constructive, good-tempered debate with the commenters who were mostly from the right of the political spectrum, but it was a struggle. I now have a far better appreciation of how difficult it would be for say, Atrios, to answer the hundreds of comments he receives, let alone emails. The same goes for Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias and the other big liberal bloggers - the elite.

I would like to publicly apologise to them for suggesting that they should be able to keep up with it all, answering mails and comments from every "insignificant microbe" in the blogosphere. It was unrealistic of me.

However, I still stick by my original contention that the elite should do their damnedest to encourage and nurture those very microbes who are often inspired to blog by the big fish. I am pleased to say that since the "progressive pecking order" debate began, weeks ago, all of them have made more obvious efforts to do so including posting links to, as they all put it, "blogs they read but don't mention often enough". I would personally like to see them use those bloggers writings from time to time instead of the more common "I agree with Atrios/Matt/Kevin/Kos" but that too may be unrealistic given the demands on their time.

Maybe we need a new way of getting messages from the bottom to the top. I would contend that blogrolled liberal alliancies simply aren't effective, for instance.

Thanks for reading Newshog, those who do. Your support and interest means more than you know.

Regards, Cernig

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

>>"I did my best to keep up with the comments and to present a constructive, good-tempered debate with the commenters who were mostly from the right of the political spectrum, but it was a struggle."

Good grief! - I just had a go at reading all 75 comments from last Monday, and readily admit I gave up less than half-way through, due to information overload rather than lack of time. However, in the first third which I did manage to read, I was impressed with your valiant effort to answer each post.

No wonder I keep resisting the urge to blog -- it would have taken me at least a week to ponder, compose, and post that many replies, even if I had nothing else on my agenda. Speaking of which... it's looking like you could use a hand, so I just wrote myself a reminder to help you with news items for Thursday's Daily Grail.

Keep up the good work,
Kat

Anonymous said...

I, too, just plowed through the comments on that post. it was a blogging echo of the Battle of Borodino. What a cast! Shannon Love even made a cameo appearance. I was amazed and impressed by everyone's durability, civility and intellectual integrity. I thought about blogging the comments thread, but I already put people to sleep with long posts before they get to the end. Otherwise I would get more comments.

I dug this out of your December reference...
"If you are a lowly insignificant microbe in the liberal blogger ecosystem then, no matter what you have to say or how eloquently it is said, you should not count on aid from the bigger fish in the pond to make your point known or to call attention to your work as a whole."

Just want to say thanks. I am encouraged to keep on keepin' on. You make an excellent point. I am reminded of that great old Will Rogers line that "I'm not a member of any organized political party...I'm a Democrat."

Hoots said...

Sorry, forgot to check the box. I don't really want to remain anonymous after all I went through...