Main Stream Competition

Olive is right, there’s no way for a blogger to beat the Main Stream Media’s reach, without first joining it (or being promoted by it). There are even bloggers such as Steyn who have adapted their marketing quite well as to exploit the reach the Web has, to gain new followers who may have been unfamiliar with him prior to seeing his blog promoted by other conservative bloggers.

On amusing comment Olive got was that the commenter figured he’d never heard of Small Dead Animals. Actually, Olive mentioned that some blogs have large readerships, but that its an exception. It’s also worth pointing out that Kate has admitted that her blog is a sort of aggregator, where her readers send her story tips and she’s basically the editor of the online paper. Her blog is also frequently promoted by John Gormley and Charles Adler, both main stream media pundits with provincial and national audiences.

When bloggers do become successful, it’s common for MSM reporters to subscribe to them, and even invite the bloggers onto TV or radio programs as guest experts. It’s nearly impossible for a blogger to remain truly independent, and gain a large following, let alone a following as huge as a national TV audience. And even if blogging is their full time job (and it rarely is, because bloggers had lives before they blogged), then it’s impossible to have as much interesting content as the MSM can provide. That’s why aggregation of content is essential for bloggers to maintain a following. Syndicate, and you’ll have more eyes looking at your work.

I learned to, or instinctively decided to, join blog aggregators in 2004.
Progressive Bloggers and SaskBlogs are two of the ones I’m proudly listed on.

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Hat tip to 264MHz

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If a blogger blogs in the forest, and no one reads him, does he have a connection?

If an email box is spammed, and no one checks it, does anyone care? (Yes, an email administrator will have to deal with an email account that is using its quota.)

Persistence of Vision

It must be a very stressful thing to go blind. A member of my extended family has macular degeneration, and has lost all of their sight in one of their eyes, and most in the other. They can barely read anymore, or play cards, and when you are 90 years old, those are two of your main activities.

Here’s a blogger from Saskatchewan talking about his vision problems. If I felt my perfect sight was going to turn into nothing within a few years, I’d start out by panicking. I think that would make the most sense. And then I’d try to develop a photographic memory, and look at everything I possibly could, before I couldn’t any longer.

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Seeing the past clearly is a type of vision that Craig or his writers enjoys. This is brilliant.

The bad parts of youth are celebrated in our society because youth is celebrated for its inexperience, gullibility, and susceptibility to advertising. As a result, young people realize they have power because they are cherished over the wise, and seek to maintain the qualities that make them young, rather than aspire to be wiser and older.

Local Food to Local Folk

I was surfing through the SaskBlogosphere this evening after returning home from a bike ride to Parkridge, and found an inspirational tale of eating locally. And I also came across a heart wrenching story of losing a grandparent.

SaskBlogs BBQ take 4

Well I had a good time, and so did the other two people to show up, but I guess I’ll have to rethink the whole BBQ gathering idea for bloggers if I expect other people to find it, and come out. I may go out and have a BBQ again sometime because I like the location and there’s plenty of Summer left. If someone else is interested that time, I’ll even give GPS coordinates next time. The weather was perfect, despite the looming clouds and threatening forecast (darn you Environment Canada *shakes fist in mock outrage*).

Anyway, I learned about some new blogs to check out, taught Monty that it’s possible to get crazy-low interest for a mortgage through a broker, and ate some tasty food that I brought. The BBQ potluck turned into a plain BBQ instead.

The trees were not totally filled with these caterpillars, but there were quite a few at this time of year.

SaskBlogs Saskatoon February 8, 2009 ; new aggregators

Huffb1, Tanya, and Zach Bell have put together a SaskBlogs get-together for a week from this Sunday. I’m not certain I’ll be able to make it up to Saskatoon on a Sunday, but if I do I’ll be sure to be at the event 1:00PM.

You might also want to check out a new SaskBlogs Aggregator I found on a site called Feedcluster. I’m not running the new aggregator, but it looks like the province will have a blog aggregator again, almost a year after the previous one shut down due to legal threats to a member blog and anyone displaying the blog’s feed.

LibLogs, one of the country’s biggest political blog aggregators is also facing a challenge of a different sort, as James has set up Libs Online.

Saskatchewan Blogs in the Canadian Blog Awards

The Canadian Blog Awards have entered the voting phase. I’m in several categories (thank you to all of my nominators). There’s also The Rider Prophet, Buckdog, Small Dead Animals, Politics ‘n’ Poetry/The Regina Mom, Tammy Robert, The Grumpy Voter, Regina in Pictures, Wheatsheaf, Accidental Deliberations, John Gormleys blog, Stubble Jumping Redneck, and probably several others that I missed seeing (or don’t yet know are written by Saskatchewanians.

Today I also learned of two other blogs from this province.
NorthVUs and C.J.’s Blog Hood.

I would have liked to nominate more Saskatchewan blogs, but it’s a little unseemly to both nominate a ton of blogs, and co-Operate the CBAs, even if the voters decide the winners. Besides, only one blog from anywhere in Canada can win in each category (with the exception of best blog post, and series), and with the political blogs there are some overlap.

SaskBloggers Get Ice Cream

Saturday was the 3rd Annual SaskBloggers get together in Saskatoon. The turnout was pretty good with 7 bloggers and 2 guests in attendance. I think we made more noise laughing than kids getting ice cream in the restaurant.

Saskboy (me), Lore_Weaver (whose blog has been spammed into malfunctioning), Jadon, Twyla, Tanya, Zach Bell, and Huffb1 came out to talk politics, pollution, technology, car sharing, blogs, and more.

On the way back from Saskatoon, Patty and I clocked a coyote with the front bumper at 100km/h. The bumper, and the coyote did not survive.

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In talking with my dead-tree-media relative later on in the day, he made a good point that once newspapers are no longer able to sell advertising, and professional journalism newsrooms give way to blogs and central TV news services, democracy is going to suffer a crisis. Spin doctors will feed bloggers, and they will flood media with mostly spin, without professional journalists to gather news and filter the filler from the facts. It’s logic counter-intuitive to bloggers who are distrustful of professional media, but undeniably there will be fewer bloggers attending court, or press conferences than there are newspaper journalists. Will bloggers step up, and gather news when the pros get other jobs?

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A news story on Saturday Report about Right to Play, reminded me that VANOC 2010 is not allowing Right to Play to appear at the Olympics because they have sponsors that might conflict with those who paid to sponsor the Olympics. It’s a fine example of how VANOC and the Olympics are totally corrupt, and place money above the spirit of sport and children.

Personal Finances

With finances on the brains of a lot of people these days, here are some really interesting blogs I came across that have advice on saving, even in the face of economic uncertainty. There’s also a bit about how to take successful strangers out to lunch so you can learn what they did to get rich. There are great saving tips here too.

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Hat tip to Andy “Pow!” Nulman.

I guess, in the same sort of line of thinking, Saturday at 12:00 in Jerry’s Food Emporium (Saskatoon) would be a good way to learn from successful bloggers, since a group of us will be eating lunch and talking about the world.

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Wednesday night I watched “Harry Potter – The Chamber of Secrets” [8/10], about a week after I saw “Harry Potter – The Philosopher’s Stone” [8/10]. Both were better movies than I thought they would be.

Riders 5-0

/=S=/
The Saskatchewan Roughrider won their 5th in a row this season, making their best start to a season in modern history. I think even with the 3 costly injuries this week, we’ll pull together another win next week. It’s so impressive that we did this using 3 different quarterbacks.

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The SaskBlogs BBQ was yesterday, and the weather was perfect, defying the weatherman’s chance of thunderstorms. Unfortunately car trouble, ill family, the Rider game, and conflicting engagements all kept quite a few people away, so I’ll make a better effort next year to pick a date more people can make it. Monty from Canadian Money Advisor came out again, and several of my friends and family, and most of us got stuffed on hamburgers, hotdogs, noodle salad, chips, garden peas, and cookies.

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I watched “National Treasure 2” [8/10] and the last hour of “Knight Rider” [5/10], and caught the odd first half of “Batman and Robin” [6/10] in the last weeks. When it’s not pouring rain, it’s been a very good time to get outside and enjoy the city, so blogging has naturally taken a bit of a back seat the last while.

SaskBlogs BBQ at noon

Today’s the 3rd Annual SaskBlogs BBQ in Regina. Details at Saskblogs.ca
Hope you can make it. Bring some food and share at lunch, or stop by to visit.

I also hope that this stuff stays away from Regina until at least after the Riders beat the Argos and Kerry Joseph in the evening: