Wednesday, August 06, 2003

Saltire is celebrating its second birthday.   Steve MacLaughlin chose to take his weblog down a narrow path in its second year, focusing on auto racing – not the kind they do in Charlotte, either, but the world of Formula One. I think he’s really onto something – tightly focused blogs have natural audiences, and the good ones may prove to be commercially viable, although that doesn’t seem to be Saltire’s goal.   Now Steve says he’s going to take his blogging “to a new location and in a new direction” … but he’s not yet saying what they are. Happy birthday and good luck, Saltire, I look forward to whatever comes next. 4:53:24 PM    comment []   trackback []

Last night we watched To Kill a Mockingbird. When Scout asked Atticus if he “defends niggers,” Sydney turned to me and asked, “What’s a nigger?”   I told her it was an ugly hateful old word for black people, and that we don’t use it.   She’s a native North Carolinian approaching the age of ten, and she had never heard the N-word. Times do change for the better.   Elijah read the book last year and he and Lisa and I agreed that the book was better than the movie, as books usually are. But we all loved Gregory Peck. 4:17:02 PM    comment []   trackback []

With all respect to the Howard Dean campaign, if you want to see a state-of-art first person campaign blog, check out Greensboro City Council candidate David Hoggard. He’s only been blogging since Sunday, and he’s found his voice.   On historic preservation: “No historic building that I have EVER seen is beyond repair, the statement is simply code for ‘we don't want to mess with it’ or ‘I have not one creative bone in my body.’”   He’s not afraid to think out loud: “The White Street landfill issue is giving me fits.”   And he’s already figured out that it helps to give shout-outs to the press. 11:35:43 AM    comment []   trackback []

Lawrence Lessig on John Edward’s toe-dip into blogging: “With one more step, he’d be in blog land. I’m not quite sure what’s holding him back. For a man who has defended affirmative action across North Carolina, this would be easy.”   He’s right. Edwards has convictions, and he knows how to express himself. He could be a great blogger . But does he have the staff to pull it off?   That’s a question, not an allegation. But the staff question is critical to Edwards’ weblog prospects, and those of other candidates.   The successful Howard Dean weblog is largely written and signed by his staff. “The staffers are fantastic,” David Weinberger told me on the phone recently. “Fast and passionate. They have their own voices and aren’t over-edited.”   The Dean weblog also fits into, and helps define, the larger campaign’s culture. “The staff fundamentally thinks that way,” says Weinberger.   “Why does Dean have the only interesting, and in some ways genuine, weblog among the Democratic candidates?” he muses. “My guess: there are the 20-year-olds, saying, let me write a campaign weblog, and someone keeps saying ‘No.’ It means giving up control of their message.”   So Edwards might prove to be a better blogger than Dean, who Weinberger admits “is not a great blogger. What he writes is not usually very interesting, or very bloggy.” But if the Edwards campaign doesn’t get blog culture, he still won’t have much of a blog, and all that Dean magic he and the other candidates are chasing will continue to elude him. 11:20:51 AM    comment []   trackback []

James Taranto snarks: “But do politicians have what it takes to succeed in the cutthroat world of blogging? Not likely.”   Americans do like to be entertained, but I’m not sure that we need every candidate to write with the verve of Glenn “The Executioner” Reynolds for campaign blogs to work. 10:51:52 AM    comment []   trackback []