A note to our readers

Another edition.

You've got Ava and C.I. taking on The Princes of Malibu in their review "The Bull of Malibu." You've got an interview with Betty. You've got "1 Book, 1 Minute." You've got . . .

Wait a second. "1 Book, 1 Minute?" What happened to "Five?"

Good question.

If you read the essay, you'll see exactly what happened.

When we met up in person and via phone Saturday evening we had a number of features planned. And we intended to do "Five Books, Five Minutes." But C.I. dropped a bombshell: The Common Ills might be going dark.

It was hard to come back from that. Which isn't a complaint to C.I. or about C.I. After we got over the jaw drop, we had a long discussion (The Third Estate Sunday Review, C.I., Betty, Mike, Rebecca and Kat).

The reality is that one person can only do so much. The reality is also that 15 minutes of sleep on a Friday night doesn't cut it. As C.I. said, it leaves one feeling like an exposed nerve. (We have permission for that quote.) There are things that fall by the wayside in posting to The Common Ills. And when you've got other things on your plate (as C.I. does) making time for a website isn't easy. It's not helped by members like ourselves. We take a hard look at our own actions in the essay we wrote (while Ava and C.I. were doing their TV review). We're asking that other members of The Common Ills community take a look at their own actions.

It's hard to rally some days. We're lucky to only post once a week. Some days the news knocks us out, leaves us depressed. If we go over to The Common Ills, we can find the call to take on the news and fight back. We're sure that's not easy day after day, several times a day. C.I.'s not doing linkfests. There are entries that we've teased about which start off with one item that's relatively important and a few paragraphs in, it's suddenly a jumping point for a hard hitting essay. (Like the thing C.I. posted two Saturdays ago -- on a twenty minute break from helping us, at that.) There's original thought going up there and not just "linkfests." They're rough drafts, as C.I.'s notes at the site, but they require work and thought. And they require time.

The way the community is set up, time's also required for e-mails. And with the volume of e-mails, a lot of time's being spent on them. We've offered our thoughts and ideas on ways to cut down on some of the time spent on e-mails in the essay. We encourage other members of The Common Ills to come up with their own ideas and to examine their own actions.

As backup if C.I. steps down (as opposed to shutting the site which is what was discussed), Ava has been designated. Due to that, she's been brought in for joint entries and she has access to the e-mails to get a feel for what's involved. When she knows things are really tight, she'll offer to go in and go through some e-mails. She didn't take part in the essay (she and C.I. were doing their TV review) but she's read the essay and she notes that since the defense of a reporter's stance not to reveal a source went up at The Common Ills, the drive by e-mails have gotten larger in volume and more heated in their comments. In the middle of composing the essay, Dona dropped a bombshell that Ava had told her about a drive byer who weighed in to wish that C.I. dies of cancer because C.I. hadn't written back. Ava says that a number of people write in now that the news is out and offer such "hopes."

C.I.'s not Adam Nagourney and doesn't come running to people saying, "Oh, this person said they hope I die!" Knowing that this isn't a single incident but a pattern in the drive bys, we're honestly surprised that C.I. still bothers to read e-mails from nonmembers. But if they weren't read, you wouldn't get Attorney X offering legal analysis of the Plame case like you did twice last week. And it's the "what might be missed" that's always made C.I. refuse to turn over the reading of e-mails to others. Jess makes a suggestion in the essay: two e-mail accounts, one for members that goes out only via Gina and Krista's newsletter and the other for visitors posted publicly at the site. Jess has already offered to go through a public e-mail account. We all stand by that offer and would gladly help by reading it and passing on anything that really needed to be passed on. But we're willing to bet that with all the members out there who care, you can probably think of additional ideas, probably better ones. So we're asking you to provide input to Gina and Krista and not just vote in the poll this week about should the comments option return to the web site.

On the Fourth of July we were shocked to discover that Folding Star had packed it in. If C.I. decides to follow that, we'll support the decision. But in the meantime, we should all be thinking of ideas that would make The Common Ills less time consuming. We wrote the essay with C.I.'s permission ("write what you want" was what we were told) and we wrote it because The Common Ills matters to us. If it matters to you, you need to do a little more work than just voting in the latest poll Gina and Krista are putting together.

When you read their round-robin, you get a valuable resource. But are you aware that it's two of them producing it. Are you aware that, as Krista said on the phone when we called her last night, "We usually only do the one a week and we get help. I can't imagine doing it every day and that's what The Common Ills is like." As we bullshit and joke around putting together each edition of The Third Estate Sunday Review, we can't imagine it either. Even without the e-mails.

We make a point in the essay that we want to make here: The Common Ills does not exist, and did not come about, to give you a Cliff's Notes version of The New York Times. Members asked for more opinion. C.I.'s doing that at members request. But some people seem to think that this important story or that important story got missed. If you think something was important, you do an e-mail and say "quote me and share this with the community" where you talk about that article. Quit expecting C.I. to do all the work for you.

We've teased C.I. about the post that went up at tax time, as the deadline drew near, that contained an apology for the slow pace in posting but explained a member was filing for the first time and was lost. Members, according to Ava, make requests like that all the time. We hate to break it to you, but helping you with your taxes isn't something you should be writing in about.
(We also think that C.I. could and should say, "Good luck with that, I hope you find someone to help you." If replying at all. But let's face it, if you ask for help -- on taxes, a school project or whatever -- C.I.'s going to hunt down what's huntable for you. That started when the community was a reasonable number of members. It's too big for that now. Most members have been paired up with several buddies by C.I. so we'd urge to use your buddies when possible. It is a community and everyone should help each other out. But C.I. shouldn't be your first resource, the first one you to go to.)

When C.I.'s apologized to the community, we've complained. Regardless of the reason for the apology. We've argued that there's no reason to be the sin eater. But the community formed around The Common Ills and C.I. feels a strong responsibility to it. We need to all (that includes us) look at our own actions and ask if we're making reasonable requests or unreasonable demands?

To that end, we're planning next week's edition right now. We had urged C.I. not to assist with this edition and go get some rest. Even suggested no TV review for this edition (knowing that e-mails would stream in nonstop asking and complaining about such a move). We did that because C.I. needs some rest but also because we didn't know if a TV review was possible. Ava reports that they worked a little slower but otherwise it was their usual process. We read it and think you'll enjoy it (we did). (We were surprised to find laughs in there because there weren't a lot of laughs last night or this morning.)

With Folding Star's decision, we had no head's up. With this possiblity, we do have a heads up and we're using that heads up to encourage everyone to take a look at their own actions.

On our end, if we don't have stuff already close to final drafts when Saturday rolls around, we're doing a best of edition. We're trying to think of what we can do differently and we'd encourage you to do the same.

We thank Dallas for his hard work this edition hunting down links. Always there to make the online edition of this a strong one. We thank Maria for compiling her Spanish and English entry that demonstrates that Democracy Now! is covering headlines in two languages. We thank Maria and C.I. for permission to reprint and we urge you to get the word out. We thank Gina and Krista for their advise tonight and for listening.

For help in the writing of this edition, we thank Rebecca, Mike, Betty and Kat. We thank Betty for the interview (which C.I. had suggested to both us and Betty mid-week).

We thank, always, C.I. And certainly we credit C.I. and Ava for their TV reviews. They continue to refuse a byline for their reviews because they say that goes against the collaborative nature of The Third Estate Sunday Review. So there's no byline but readers know who writes the TV review.

Check out the editorial.

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava