Editorial: You say you're doing a Blog Report

Call it a "Blog Report," call it "Today's Blogs," call it whatever you want. But how the hell do you do a blog report, a report on blogs, and miss the big story of the week?

If you're CJR Daily, you miss it by sitting Friday out. (They really work hard to do their four posts each day.) If you're Slate, you do it by ignoring the topic. And it's not like readers didn't tip them off. We're looking at e-mails to both CJR Daily and Slate notifying them of the Blogger "brownout" (our term) that prevented people who use Blogger from blogging at the end of last week.

It was news to Wired News. "Bloggers Pitch Fits Over Glitches" by Adam L. Penenberg outlined the basics on April 7th at 2:00 am PST. But possibly when you spend the majority of your online "research" time searching for the dancing baby from Ally McBeal, you miss the big story?

Look, no one's forcing them to do a blog report of any kind (and some would argue the world would be better off without their lackadaisical approach), but if you're going to report on blogs and Bloggers malfunctioning, seems like that's a story. Or as one tipster noted to them, "If ABC went dead, that would be a story."

Here's what Peneberg noted in his article:

Lately, it seems like almost every time you tune into your favorite Blogger-hosted blog to catch up on the latest gossip, meme, political diatribe or cybersnark, you find that the site is frozen in time. Or, there are multiple posts with identical content. Since Blogger, which is owned and operated by that sleek geek machine, Google, is a lot like a public utility, when it goes down, so do the lights on a large swatch of the blogosphere.
The result: a lot of irate netizens.
"This has been the worst week of blogging since I started," complained Digby, who ruminates on politics. "Blogger has been constantly bloggered and when it wasn't, my cable has been offline. Since last Tuesday, I've barely been able to read Atrios, for gawds sake, much less post one of my own brilliant observances. I hate blogging in coffee shops. I just hate it. But I'm here and if I don't keel over from caffeine poisoning before Blogger eats my post, I'll hopefully have something brilliant up soon. Or not."

Unlike CJR Daily, let's clear the air from the start. Please note that we've pull quoted in a way that links to Digby and Atrios. For the record, we have not been involved in any "clusterfuck" (Candy Perfume Boy term) with either. We have not partied down with them, we have not drank with them, we have not seen any online photos that either may display so we are unable to engage in the high standard of "hubba, hubba, hubba" discourse that CJR Daily so often sets. We merely pull quoted from the top of the article.

But "netizens" were upset? That sounds like a topic for a blog report. That strikes us as news if you're "beat" is the blogs. (You might have to tear yourself away from your hunt for the Dancing Baby . . .) Now we know it's really hard for the kiddies at CJR Daily to tear themselves away from The Daily Show (or that they think it is for bloggers to at any rate), but Wired got a news story out of this. And Slate and CJR Daily? Nothing.

And yet both do blog reports and, again, both were tipped off to this story. (Though Slate ignored it, they did e-mail back to at least one reader that they were passing the story on to the guy doing the blog report that day. Let's hope he's not also sitting on the lost minutes of the Nixon tapes!)

The Wired article will tell you the anger frustration many people felt. As a once a week site that basically pulls everything together on Saturday, we weren't effected. But other community members were.

Folding Star of A Winding Road noted that the troubles were non-stop all week. The result was feelings of discouragement and that "my readers have probably all abandonded ship by now!"

Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude lost her Thursday post twice (reconstructed it on Friday). "I couldn't believe it. Here was something I wanted to share and I'm trying to share it and it won't go up. I felt like Candy Perfume Boy in that last regard, but I digress. This week, I was trying to hit hard on the importance of the sunset provisions of the Patriot Act not being extended. I was doing that on the blog and in my own life where I held one house party after another to get the word out. And to see the story that C.I. sent me and know what I wanted to say but not be able to get it out there was really frustrating."

Betty of Thomas Friedman Is A Great Man started out Thursday excited. "All day I was thinking, as soon as I get off work, cook dinner, get the kids fed, get them settled or maybe after they've gone to bed, I can sit down and do this reply to Thomas Friedman's column Thursday. But I go to log in and it just won't work. Over and over. And I'm getting really upset and keep trying. I e-mail C.I. who called and said Rebecca's having the same problem, just let it go and move on. But I was so discouraged that when I did write on Friday, I sent the thing out to Rebecca, C.I., Dona, Ava and Ty to ask, 'Is it even worth posting?' And even with the encouragement, I still felt like I didn't say what I was wanting to say. It was discouraging."

C.I. of The Common Ills notes that Ron (Why Are We Back In Iraq?) had the echo posting going on and that Luke (wotisitgood4) had a post he couldn't get into to finish. "I had e-mails from Rebecca and Betty that I was reading on another screen as I kept trying to log into Blogger. So when I couldn't get in, I called Betty and told her it wasn't something she was doing wrong. And because of the tone Rebecca had in her e-mail, I decided I wasn't going to get worked up over something I couldn't control. I asked community members UK Computer Gurus to look at it and see what was going on and I e-mailed Blogger.
I heard back repeatedly from the UK Computer Gurus, at least. And I had told them that there was no way if this went on the next morning that I wasn't posting. They took the lead and when I couldn't get into Blogger Friday morning, I was surprised to hear from the UK that they had set up another site. And it's late and I know I'm going on too long, but let me say that they did a really great job and a lot of members have noted that they like the look of that site."

So is that the answer? Mirror sites? Backup sites? The whole Blogger network was basically down. Near the end of his Wired article, Penenberg notes this:

So what would happen if something vitally important happened -- a terrorist attack, an assassination, war, political upheaval -- and the blogosphere went atwitter, but Blogger went down?

We'd say that's an important question if you're doing a blog report of any kind. We're confused as to how two sites can do blog reports and miss the big story of the week?

Not being Cokie Roberts, we have no pearls; not being Candy Perfume Boy, we have no candy necklace, so all we're left to chew on is this: Ron notes that three years ago, Blogger was utilized by over 150,000 sites and guesses that it's probably reached the millionith mark by now. That's a lot of people effected on the writing side and a lot more on the reading side (and there's crossover). As more and more people turn to the internet for heads up, what would happen if the blog world went dark?

Judging by the lack of interest in the Blogger story this week, we'd guess that Wired would cover it and that those doing blog reports would keep searching for their Dancing Baby. Meanwhile, readers who still held hope of getting any useful coverage of the blogosphere in these blog reports would miss out, again, on the big story of the week.

We'll leave the pearls to Cokes, the candy to Candy Perfume Boy, and we'll chew on how people who self-describe "journalist" and who are supposed to be covering the blogosphere can miss the biggest blog story of the week.