Blogging

PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

As a long and violent abuse of power is generally the means of calling the right of it in question, (and in matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry,) and as the king of England hath undertaken in his own right, to support the parliament in what he calls theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpations of either.

In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise and the worthy need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious or unfriendly, will cease of themselves, unless too much pains is bestowed upon their conversion.

The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which, their affections are interested. The laying a country desolate with fire and sword, declaring war against the natural rights of all mankind, and extirpating the defenders thereof from the face of the earth, is the concern of every man to whom nature hath given the power of feeling; of which class, regardless of party censure, is

THE AUTHOR.

Philadelphia, Feb. 14, 1776.

SmilePolitely.com, a local online magazine, interviewed me for their regular series profiling local bloggers, and the article is up today.

My favorite part, indulging a bit of ego:

As he looks back on the history of the site, Hulten’s warmest memory is breaking the Chief Illiniwek retirement story. “I had a couple of people that tipped me off about 24 hours early that the Board of Trustees was going to announce that they were going to retire Chief Illiniwek,“ Hulten related. “The funny thing for me was that all my friends that are regular reporters, that write for the Tribune and all these papers across the state, were trying to get ahold of me to find out who my sources were.

“And it was just nice to be first and to say, ‘I don’t need to run this by an editor, I don’t need to reveal my sources,‘ I can just run with it with absolute certainty that it’s going to happen, and I was right.“

There's also a little bit about the News-Gazette in there, and why I think they're so invaluable to the community and to IP.com.

Thanks to Joel Gillespie and SmilePolitely.com for the article.

Watch CBS Videos Online

UPDATE:  Here's the link to the video if the embedded version isn't working for you.

http://www.thecapitolfaxblog.com/

272 comments on the thread regarding our dear governor's appointment to Obama's Senate seat.

209 comments on the thread regarding the likelihood the feds wiretapped Lon Monk's cell phone and have even juicier stuff than they told us about on Dec. 9.

It's been a while since the last blogger bash.  Any interest in having one this fall?

Several months ago, at the urging of some friends, I applied for media/blogging credentials to cover the Republican National Convention in my birth city of Minneapolis later this summer.  They were specifically seeking applications from bloggers centering on state politics, and while I mostly write about local stuff here, I figured it wouldn't hurt to apply.

On Monday, I received an email which said, in part:

Thank you for your interest in covering the 2008 Republican National Convention and applying for Special Press Credentials.

This letter is to inform you that IlliniPundit has been approved to receive one (1) Special Press Credential for the purpose of covering the convention.

The assigned credential is to be used only by the person(s) for whom it was requested. Those persons include the following:

•     Gordy Hulten

This credential allows access to the 200 Level of the Xcel Energy Center as well as access to the Media Center, Press Conference Room and Filing Center.  This credential does not provide access to any broadcast position, camera stand or writing press stand, nor does it provide access to the delegate floor.

I was surprised when I first read it, and I'm still surprised.  Our readership keeps growing, but in now way did I think our audience was large enough to justify credentialing me, especially being from deepest-blue Illinois.  And I felt a bit overwhelmed - covering the RNC is more than a bit out of my league, and I've never been to a national convention before.

But mostly I felt grateful - this opportunity would never have presented itself if not for you  - the readers, posters and commenters on IP.com. 

As it turns out, I will not be able to attend the Convention, and so the invitation is a bit bittersweet for me - I'm honored and disappointed at the same time. 

But mostly I just want to say, "Thank you."  This place is only worthwhile, and worthy of such recognition, because of you, and when things like this happen, it's a stark reminder of that.

From James Joyner, linking to Aaron Brazell:

While political blogs are blogging in terms of media coverage of the phenomenon, they’re actually a relatively small part of the story. It’s not just that, as we all know, personal diary blogs far outnumber others in sheer volume but that political blogs make up a relatively small segment of the blogs people actually read and link to.

I know, for myself, that I've been writing here about politics almost every weekday now for three-and-a-half years.  The two-week break I took in late May is the longest break (and the only significant break) I've taken from blogging since January 2005.  After that break, I've had a hard time getting my blogging "mojo" back, so to speak.  There are a number of reasons: 

• A new house and lots of offline projects
• A real job which keeps getting more hectic
• Campaigns to work on the side
• An eight-month-old son who is an absolute joy

As I used to write, "Real Life" has intervened, but that's just a part of the story for me.  I wonder how much of it is just that people are tired of reading and writing about politics, especially at the national level?  The issues are the same, the arguments are the same, the actors are pretty much the same, and there is precious little discussion and persuasion and a tiring abundance of shouting over opposing viewpoints.  The primary, as much as I enjoyed the theater, lasted forever.  There's a small part of me that's just tired of writing and reading and discussing (to the extent that discussion is possible) national politics, and we're in the early-summer doldrums for local campaigns, where there is lots of activity but little worth discussing. 

As an example:  I've got a major upgrade of IP.com that is 90 percent complete, but I keep putting off the last step: developing a theme or themes for the upgraded site.  Normally, I would have tackled the task with zest, but now I'm having difficulty finding the motivation.

And this will shock some of you, but I really miss anonymous commenters.  They were too often abusive, and detracted from constructive discussion, but they were often interesting and educating.  I'd love to figure out a way to enable them again.

Anyway, this post has really evolved into a long-winded excuse for why I've not been blogging as much for the past few weeks, and that's not really how I intended it.  If there's anything here worth discussing, then, uh, discuss!  Otherwise, feel free to ignore my tired ramblings...

http://thecapitolfaxblog.com/2008/04/01/question-of-the-day-494/#comments

For those of you who somehow missed it last night (or who couldn't get the live feed working), you can listen to an archived version of my appearance on the Illinois GOP Network / Blog Talk Radio show last night.  The appearance lasted about an hour, and I rambled aimlessly and pointlessly for most of it, discussing New Hampshire, Illinois, and blogs.  Illinois GOP Chairman Andy McKenna joined us for the last few minutes of the program, and I mostly (wisely) shut up and let him talk, so that's probably the best part of the show.

I really enjoyed myself last night, and I'd love to do something like that on here (maybe a 30 minute discussion with guest once per week or so), if I can figure out how to make it work.

Illinois blogger par excellence ArchPundit has assembled a BlogAds "hive" called "Blogginois" to collectively market advertising services.  You can see a new ad on the right for that hive.

The other bloggers in the hive are:

• Chicagoist
• Peoria Pundit
• Prairie State Blue
• Chicago Reader
• Methods Reporter
• Faithfully Liberal

To advertise, click on the ad on the right, or go here.

Thanks!

IlliniPundit.com now has 191 registered users.

Daily Kos has more than 130,000 registered users. 

I don't think anyone will be naming a convention after this blog any time soon.

(Again - 130,000 registered users.  Wow.  Daily Kos, though I don't agree with their politics, is just an awesome online political world unto itself, and I certainly admire the community they've built.)

My blogfather, Bill Dennis of Peoria Pundits, has an interesting story about a judge tossing a blogger out of a hearing:

My two cents: Lest the judge alone come under criticism for his decision, it must be noted that the lone representative for Peoria County SA Kevin Lyons’ also opposed letting Elaine Hopkins do her job.

One wonders what Judge Purham would have done were he a judge decades ago when the first radio journalists began doing their jobs. Most early broadcast reporters were, like Elaine, veterans of the print world who were trying their hand at a new exciting way to distribute the news. Would Purham have turned away young Walter Cronkite, a United Press reporter before he became Uncle Walter?

What makes a person a journalist isn’t the particular media he or she uses to disseminate the news. It’s the fact that they are disseminating the news to a mass audience.

I'd argue that the definition of journalist doesn't depend on the audience - mass audience or not, reporting events is reporting events.  But I'll be watching this story to see how it develops, that's for sure.

Local blogger, former school board candidate, and contributor to IlliniPundit IlliniPundit.com John Bambenek has been named 'Wanker of the Year' by dailykos.com, a highly-trafficked liberal blog.  Apparently Bambenek has filed an FEC complaint against the blog alleging they are a political committee and should be regulated as such.

Not only has this issue already been decided in the courts, but even the conservative blogs find this a troubling, bad idea that threatens the first ammendment of the constitution.

UPDATE:  Edited by IP to clarify that Bambenek doesn't contribute to IlliniPundit (me, the blogger) but rather to IlliniPundit.com (the blog site).  He "contributes" in the same way that curious and Rex Bradfield and Queen and dozens of others "contribute." 

I only make this clarification because I know, at some point, there's going to be a story about "IlliniPundit blogger files FEC complaint against Kos" or some such thing.  And nothing could be further from the truth.  I don't support this complaint, I think it's invalid under current FEC rules, I think the current FEC rules under which this complaint was filed are unconstitutional, I think the FEC should be abolished and I think political speech should be as free and unregulated as possible.

Thanks for your indulgence.

You know...just in case you were wondering.

I used to read the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center's website frequently.  I would participate in discussion via their comments, and in fact have even written a few stories that got posted to their front page over the years.  I also donated money to their capital campaign and have paid membership dues in multiple years.  But I just no longer see any point to it.  This is because the debate on ucimc.org is not open (such as the way it is here), but is instead heavily censored.

Case in point.  See the latest story on ucimc.org reporting about someone being held in the jail without seeing an attorney for unpaid debts.  The article, by Brian Dolinar, chronicles the difficulties for a current county jail inmate who has been stuck there for six months due to money owed, and is critical of the State's Attorney for her handling of these types of cases.

I found the article interesting and generally agree that putting debtors in jail isn't a great solution, as you take away their primary method of paying back the debt---working.  That said, when I first read the article, I saw one comment that hadn't yet been hidden, and it said this:

"Trolling" pretty much just means "disagreeing" at this point, right? Is there more to it than that? If so, I'd love to hear you explain it.

This was my first clue to check the 'hidden comments,' as there was nothing visible above this comment that would have led to it.  If you aren't familiar, the IMC software has the ability to hide comments (as does most blog software I presume), and the IMC uses it extensively.  So I checked the hidden comments, which you can also do here.  What did I find?  A couple of comments discussing the article and the merits of putting people in jail for unpaid debt. 

I didn't agree with the comments that were hidden, but I can't see any reason for hiding them.  They are asking real questions and reflect one point of view.  They invite debate of the issues.  That someone doesn't agree with them doesn't make them a 'troll.'  So, having read that comment, then going on to read the hidden comments, I posted my own comment:

I can't disagree with Anonymous 10:36. Click on the 'hidden comments' link below and see what you think of the comments that were already hidden. It seems to me that the IMC site just plain doesn't support the idea of discussion on controversial issues here.

I'm sure you can guess what happened next.  Yes, my comment was also hidden as a 'troll.'  As far as I'm concerned, that's it.  The end of debate.  If one can't discuss the issues on that site, then the site has no purpose other than to be a PR vehicle.  That's ok if it's what the IMC wants, but it's not what I thought they were about. 

If you look at their mission statement, you'll find the following:

We will empower people to "become the media" by providing democratic access to available technologies and information.

Once most every comment by anyone who disagrees with the posted articles are getting hidden as 'trolling,' I no longer see the site as "providing democratic access to available technologies and information." 

As a previous member of the UCIMC, a previous contributor of it's front page stories, and one who has donated many hours of time to the organization over the years, I can no longer support an organization that censors real debate.  Further, I  find it ironic that  one of my best options for sharing my point of view is the right-slanted illinpundit website.  However, on illinipundit I have the option of writing a blog post, others have the option of promoting it to the front page if they like it, and anyone can say whatever they want in the comments.  That, my friends, is 'democratic access to available technologies and information.' 

IThe IMC should turn off commenting altogether if they don't support it, and they should update their mission statement to reflect the change in attitude.

I have been a registered poster for a couple of months, it's not that hard to do. I'm more than tired of these "hit & run" posters. Hiding behind anonymity when making personal attacks on anyone that is on here or doing the same to public officials. If you have something to share please do but get a screen name and act like an adult. I would like to see the site require registering and using some kind of screen name, I use my own name, I post nothing here that I would not say to someones face. Let's grow up!!!

gct13.com is a local photoblog by Dan O'Brien.

I've blogrolled him - go check it out.

Who else am I missing?

The other presidential candidates not so much.  Powerline, arguably the most influential of all conservative blogs, has started a forum for presidential candidates to allow candidates to communicate with voters. As teased by powerline:

We wanted to create a space where the Republican presidential candidates can interact with some of the most passionate and knowledgeable conservatives anywhere

Unfortunately, every candidate in the forum except Romney took the forum as an opportunity for some guy from their campaign to paste an item from their own website, or something of that nature.  Only Romney decided to use the forum to actually communicate something in a way that was different than the typical campaign.  I throw Thompson into the mix of the candidates who "get it" because he's been using the internet for the last two months to create a buzz around himself and to communicate directly to voters.

The internet is not the end all to campaign by any means.  But it is becoming increasingly important.  In the primary campaign, it's importance will be magnified.  Candidates who take wonderful opportunities like that provided by Powerline and squander them leave me shaking my head.  I've got a lot of problems with Romney (which I will detail at some point) but he scored first on this one.

Here is last night's WCIA-TV report on blogging.  They recorded it live during the 5 PM broadcast.  We were on about two minutes, and Anchor Jennifer Roscoe and I talked briefly about blogging, how to do it, why it's becoming so popular, and some do's and don't's.

I was glad to see the images used for the report focused briefly on the blogroll, and some screenshots from two excellent local blogs, American Farmer and Cat People.

I was incredibly nervous, and I look (am!) incredibly fat, but it was a lot of fun.  As much as I criticize television news, watching them from in the studio, they clearly work very hard at what they do.  And, of course, being asked to appear is very flattering, and I've got an ego just as big as anyone's.

WCIA-TV has had a new website for a while, with videos from their local stories and more user-driven features, like classifieds. 

And, of course, Jennifer Roscoe now has "Roscoe Unscripted," which was the hook for doing last night's interview.  I've blogrolled the site, and I'll be checking back often.  Her first post is excellent:

There's more I want to say or share that we just don't have time for during the news. So this blog will be just that....but more. I don't want this to just be about me (you can almost hear my husband saying thank goodness!) I picture this space to be an opportunity for us to talk or you to ask questions, about anything on your mind. I want this to be a place to rant or rave on topics from serious to silly and all things in between. Some days it could be a news story that everyone's talking about or maybe you're just looking for something to do on the weekend with the kids. But I can't do this without your help. A conversation with one person...isn’t much fun. So how about it? Are you in?

Head on over there, share your comments, and encourage the dialogue.

Thanks to Jennifer and WCIA for asking me to appear.  Thanks for each of you for making this site as popular as it is, and for indulging this little "project of vanity."

Democratic County Board Member Matt Gladney, who blogs at It's Matt's World, and I are the subjects of this week's WDWS Newsmakers Podcast.  Patrick Pfingsten spent a few minutes last week talking to Matt and I about blogging and politics.

You can find the Podcast here.  You can also subscribe to the weekly Podcasts in iTunes.

Thanks to Patrick for giving us the opportunity, and to Matt for another interesting conversation.