Now THIS Is A Blog Post

Brief, to the point, and full of link citations. Reader draws his own conclusion. People, this is how a blog post is done. (Scroll down to CLAIM vs. FACT post)

And George Was Smote Such A Buffet That He Was Unhorsed...

G-Dubya in military dress,
preparing to lead his crusaders
into battle

I forgot to add something to my prior post about the Bush press conference. What the heck is all this nonsense about freedom being a gift to the world's people from The Almighty and it being America's obligation to spread freedom? Well, George, if you're intent on a crusade, you're looking for the Sangrail in the wrong place. If your true motives are securing freedom for oppressed people (and not securing cheap oil for Americans and more no-bid contracts for Halliburton), can I suggest a few other places you might want to launch a crusade?

How about the Sudan, where the Janjaweed militia is killing upwards of 1,000 innocent people a week? Or how about all those other countries in the Middle East where torture is commonplace, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia? Or maybe we should start on the homefront, where I don't feel particularly free with schmucks like Colin Powell Junior and Asscroft running around trying to censor content that I like, or with seizure laws that allow police officers to legally steal my car if they think I smoked a doobie in it?

No, Mr. President, we don't need a crusade here. As much as we like it, we can't say with a straight face that western democracy equates to freedom. Nor can we assume it's a moral imperative to spread our values all over the known world in the name of God-given freedom. And stop acting like Sir Galahad trying to track down the Sangrail at all costs - not only is it not feasible for us to free the entire oppressed world, but it's not appropriate. So quit the crusade language, will you?

A Sustainable Business Model For Blogs

I'm thoroughly addicted to blogging. Even if nobody ever reads my blog, I find that writing a little something or two every day is good for me. Not only does it help to keep my writing chops up, but it's good for blowing off steam and advancing ideas.

In the blogging movement, I see a feasible way to change the way people consume opinions and news. I also see a way to deliver on one of the original promises of the Internet - the promise that everyone can be a publisher and compete on a relatively level playing field with the mainstream media, leading to a much truer online analog to the "marketplace of ideas."

At the same time, I see the need for a business model to emerge. There will always be a number of bloggers who do what they do out of the goodness of their hearts and a need to express themselves. But how many people do you know that climbed aboard the blogging bandwagon, posted with regularity for a few weeks, and then lost interest? How many blogs out there were once updated several times a day and are now refreshed only once or twice a month (or not at all)?

Finally, doesn't a true, level playing field entail equal opportunity to pay the hosting bills and earn money based on the audience that blogs are able to aggregate? You see where I'm going here. This movement needs a business model, for those who are interested in making money from the content they put into the blogosphere every day.

Ross Fadner from Mediapost called me last week to talk about RSS. I admit that he caught me somewhat off guard, and I told him that I wasn't following the controversy over blog syndication standards as closely as I would like. (Hey, we're getting really busy over here at Underscore...) But I did give Ross some comments that ended up in a story he wrote. My two main points were that there was a lot of bickering over standards still going on, and that it would be nice to see Microsoft integrate a reader into the next version of Office.

When the story came out, I took a bit of flak for oversimplifying things a bit and/or saying that Microsoft was to blame for holding up adoption (even though I never said such a thing).

On Monday when it came time to write my weekly Online Spin column for Mediapost, I thought a bit more deeply about how syndication should ultimately contribute to a business model for blogs, IMHO. Here's the result.

If you don't feel like following the link, here's the gist of the idea toward the end of the column...We need something that will aggregate blog content based on filters set by the end user. Said aggregation tool should also provide a revenue stream to bloggers, based on how often their content is consumed by users of the tool.

Yes, I know about Kinja, the various blog search tools, Feedster, etc. (I had to clip my two paragraphs on Kinja in my column for the sake of brevity.) While many of these tools allow for customization of feeds, they don't provide a revenue stream to bloggers. This revenue stream is needed, IMHO, if blogging is to become something bigger than it already is. If blogging continues to reside primarily in the early adopter community, it won't realize its full potential.

I'm also aware that some people like blogging just the way it is. But consider this...What if we had a huge number of bloggers all over the world simultaneously posting first-hand accounts of the things that matter to them, corroborating details of newsworthy events and covering news and opinion alongside their mainstream news media brethren? What if folks other than the owners of the most popular blogs could make a living doing this? What if governments had not only the easily-influenced mainstream media to answer to, but also a massive corps of citizen-bloggers?

Blogging has potential - potential to solve the problem of the press release-regurgitating mass media, potential to sway public opinion in ways not yet imagined, potential to keep governments on their toes much like the news media once did. In my opinion, failing to realize that potential is a great disservice and a waste of effort.

Things That Ticked Me Off About Last Night's Press Conference

It gave me no pleasure to watch President Bush squirm under the weight of reporters' questions last night, but it ticked me off to no end that Bush refused to acknowledge that his approach to Iraq and, separately, to the War on Terror leaves no room for improvement.

Speaking of squirming, that's how the President came off last night - at least in my view. Yet, mainstream news coverage of the press conference paints a much different picture, one of a composed and unwavering chief executive. I have yet to see a mainstream news piece that points out the President's obvious difficulty in thinking on his feet last night.

Okay, so the President had an off night. No biggie. But what really makes me upset is Bush's flagrant attempts to distance himself from bureaucratic foul-ups that happened on his watch. The President affirmed his expectation that he should get accurate information concerning FBI investigations from his briefings, but failed to take responsibility when that information turned out to be faulty. But if briefing information is consistently inaccurate, whose responsibility is it to fix the system and hold those responsible accountable? That responsibility belongs to the President.

The same kind of responsibility-shirking shows up in the President's comments about the evaluation of terror threats. Repeatedly, Bush asserted that his response to the 8/6 PDB was appropriate, given that the nation wasn't "on a war footing." The bigger question for me was "Should we have been on a war footing at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks?"

Considering the first World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, Clinton's actions in Afghanistan and the 1998 embassy bombings, I think we should have been in a heightened state of alert, if not "on war footing." The Bush administration knew Al-Qaeda was dangerous, knew for quite some time that Al-Qaeda was determined to attack targets on U.S. soil and had Osama Bin Laden on the FBI's Most Wanted List for a long time. That PDB should have set off alarms all over the place.

Even if Bush was unapologetic about his reasons for going into Iraq and his approach to the War on Terror, his inflexibility with regard to the June 30th deadline for relinquishing control over Iraq to a new Iraqi government is a huge cause for concern. We don't yet know what this new government will look like. Yet Bush is determined to meet that deadline even if circumstances beyond our control indicate that a review of this timetable is in everybody's best interests. I think it's an ego thing. Bush doesn't want to admit that June 30th, a scant two and a half months away, might be an unrealistic deadline, even as our troops fight off insurgencies. Classic hubris.