Blogkeeping
A little while ago I got an invitation from a person who had started up a website to feature posts by various bloggers in a news digest format. It sounded like a good idea, but I did not want to submit any posts until I had checked it out. I am glad I did; after monitoring it for about a month, I was moved to write the following reply to the founder of the site:
Dear ******:
I have been reading your blog *** for a few weeks now, having added it
to my Bloglines feed as soon as you had the feed up and ready (and
just watching it before that.) On reflection, I have removed it from
my Bloglines feed, and I want to take the opportunity to notify you
that I am not interested at this time in participating as a writer,
forum-member or supporter. Quite frankly, I am very turned off by the
quality of most of the writers. And I do think you have a real
problem with bias. You are basically sounding a single note, and it
is the note of a rather shallow, male-dominated, US-boosting, blindly
and reactively conservative viewpoint, one which I do not even care
enough about to bother arguing with.
I wish you well for the future, and I will probably check in about
once a month to see if things improve, but at the age of 52, my life
is too short to spend any of it reading the drivel of pimply-faced
frat boys who think they are libertarians, or the middle-aged men who
write like them.
Kind regards,
Deborama
In a way, this is rather tragic, because I am not sure that the founder of this blog shares the bias of his writers (whom he is paying, by the way, as soon as the blog generates enough revenue. But even so, good idea, poor execution. Would it be possible to start a similar enterprise that featured a balanced number of liberal and conservative but high-quality bloggers, a few interesting nutters of various fringes, and a real international viewpoint, rather than just a few token stories by American "friends" abroad? I seriously doubt it. And that is very sad.
On another note - I have a nice post about bananas at Deborama's Kitchen.
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