blogging in 2011

As you may have noticed, I've dropped the blogging frequency this year. Not sure how much I`ll be blogging in 2011, although we are having a general election (on Nov 26) and at least one by-election ( in March). However if Chris Carter resigns, we'll be having another by election to stop Judith Tizard entering Parliament.

Anyway, Facebook and Twitter have replaced much of the blog conversation, so catch me around there, and Delicious is a great bookmarking tool which you can share links with others. Before I go some awards:

Best MP( and best speech) was John Key, best national MP Steven Joyce, rising star Hekia Parata, best Labour MP Grant Robertson, best minor Party MP Metiria Turei, and best CD HTML - Hard Trance is My Life, by Steve Hill. Best right wing blog is Kiwiblog, best leftwing blog is No Right Turn -although Liberation comes a close second. Worst National MP Paul Quinn, worst Labour MP ( for 2010) is/was Chris Carter and worst minor party MP Roger Douglas. (yes even David Garrett was more effective). Best left wing twittering MP is Clare Curran, best rightwing twittering MP is Tau Henare.

Prediction for 2011: election date will be 26 November and Peter Dunne will win his seat. Pretty sure at least one will be correct.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Interesting week so far this week. I was elected to the Board of Trustees of the local school that the kids are at. I also started a new job today.

Anyway, I may continue blogging, but certainly not during the day. However I may do some time delay posts, meaning you may get some posts pop up during the day, but written the night before.

Expect to see a drop in the frequency of posts - or I may even just stop.

Knocking it on the head. Goodbye...

I'm going to finish up blogging. Ive been doing it for years, but I started a new job yesterday that pretty much prevents me from blogging - at least means that there are some things I should not be blogging on - particularly in work time, like I did yesterday.

So I thought I'd knock it off. Goodbye - It's nice to have known you. It's nice to have broken a few stories, nice to have made some friends through the blog. I`ll miss it - but better to take this line than to get me in trouble with the boss.

The easiest way to set up a blog

So, you read blogs. You'd like to set up your own blog. Or you have a blog and you want to migrate it or back it up. Check out Posterous.com It is now as easy as sending an e-mail.

Here's how it works. You write your blog post. You send it (hotmail or g-mail) to post@posterous.com and hey presto, you have a blog. You can then change the e-mail address you want posts sent from, add another blog, and if you want to syndicate to Facebook or Twitter you can do that, too. You can also group blog; you register members who simply send posts to an e-mail you provide. You can also post videos and pix as well. If you don't like your post, just delete it and e-mail another one over.

It's that simple.[ h/t jonny.baker.]

Bloggers, lift your game, not your hit rates

I used to read a lot of blogs. I don't read so many now. Some of the ones I used to read a lot have lost their mojo, others are way better than most of the top 20 of the Tumeke Rankings. I have adjusted my blogroll and, on the top of that blogroll have highlighted 10 good political blogs that I think are are worth reading. The list will change. Some are not on that list because they dont blog often enough. Many are not in the Tumeke top 10.

Here they are in alpha order:
david.farrar
frog.blog
kiwipolitico
liberation
lindsay.mitchell
no.minister.
no.right.turn
pundit
red.alert
tumeke!

SO, who do you think should be in that list that is not?

Political blogging and the media

Early this morning over breakfast, political journalist Fran O’Sullivan addressed a decent size group of people on the topic of the Accidental Empire of Political Blogging.

The hosts were Rural Women NZ – although there were a good number of urban males present.

She was pretty critical of bloggers who blog anonymously – but did not extend this criticism to anonymous MSM editorial writers. She contrasted two left wing blogs, effectively claiming The Standard is left for dead by the authoritative Red Alert blog. Writers on the former blog do so anonymously, the writers of the latter do not. She seemed to think that those who do not blog under their own name cannot be as accountable. But anyone who wants to know who run most of the anonymous political blogs, such as No Right Turn and Roar Prawn, can find out who they are. Indeed, O'Sullivan herself appeared to know who many of them are. She also noted that some bloggers have lost their mojo, while most bloggers can "get away with more" as there is not the same requirement for balance, deadlines or fact checking as in the MSM.

I changed my blog recently and took out my name after getting stalked online after something I wrote.Yet as with the blogger at Ethical Martini,nearly everyone who lands here can quickly find out who I am – and I am certainly accountable for what I write. O’Sullivan even questioned whether a blogger would be sued. I know of only one political blogger who has been threatened with legal action – and if the blogger was with the media, the media outlet would defend any action, not the writer.

O’Sullivan was critical of some of the NZ on Air funded current events shows and questioned why bloggers couldn’t get some funding from a revamped organisation - NZ on Media - and also saw no reason why some bloggers could not get membership of the Press Gallery. After all, university newspapers can, and most of their writing is worse than many political blogs.

But, overall, the mainstream media see political blogs as positive.

The rise and rise of blogging

A good article by student journalist Sandra Dickson in Newswire discussing influence of political blogs in the election.

New Zealand’s most popular blogger, David Farrar, of Kiwiblog, agrees right-wing blogs in particular created a “sense of crisis around Winston”, and says bloggers can be motivated to dig deeper, while journalists are under time constraints.

Actually bloggers are also under time constraints if they want to break stories on their blogs - and we do. For free. Self-imposed constraints, mind you, but to get to the story first that's what you have to do.

Kiwiblog and fellow right blog Whale Oil were not prepared, for example, to take New Zealand First assurances about funding at face value.

“When New Zealand First said they’d paid $158,000 and it turned out to be to the Susan Couch Charitable Trusts, it was blogs that researched the trust and found out that two of the three trustees are Winston’s personal lawyers, that Susan Couch doesn’t have any control over the trust, she’s not named in the trust deeds.”

It was this humble blog that first reported some of that.

Recent blog

Brian Edwards Media. Obviously doesn't have much to say.

Using your blog to promote Twitter

Most people would know now that Twitter is a microblogging site. Some bloggers use Twitter, and it is now one of the first points of call for my international news.

So if you wondered why there is a drop off in blogging on Big News, here's one of the reasons why: I also use Twitter. Those who do tweet on Twitter will know that Darren Rowse from Problogger is an avid user of Twitter and has set up a popular site called Twitips (Twitter Tips) to assist people in their use of Twitter.

Here's an article I wrote for his site: Using your blog to promote Twitter. It was published this morning. Oh, and you can follow me on Twitter here.

Blogroll v twitter roll

Many bloggers like to link in with like minded bloggers, and so their sites have a blog roll. I have two, one for local bloggers and one for overseas bloggers. Many of them also have twitter pages. Most of these Twitter pages have their blog or website URLs on them and people are reading Twitter more which means they are reading blogs less.

So why not have a Twitter roll. It seems the logical thing to do. And I've never seen one, I have started my own in a drop down menu and it is a work in progress. I'm sure it won't be the last one. I may have to cull my blogroll eventually.

This blog is the blog of the week

Apparently this blog is the blog of the week in the Herald on Sunday today, according to some texts I received. I wonder if that makes me the blogger of the week?

People are certainly reading the blog,I know that.

Thank you for reading Big News.

Blog 'til you drop (dead)

Those who blog will know that it is time consuming running a blog. I blog outside of study, work and family commitments and get around five to six hours sleep a night.

Some aren't so lucky. The New York Times explores the ugly side of professional blogging. Some bloggers, like Matt Buchanan (pictured) work long hours often to exhaustion. The more clicks his blog posts get, the more money he gets. The more posts he does, the greater the chance of getting more clicks. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

Buchanan lives in a small apartment in Brooklyn, where his bedroom doubles as his office. He works for clicks for Gizmodo, a popular Gawker Media site that publishes news about gadgets. He says he sleeps about five hours a night and often does not have time to eat proper meals. But he does stay fueled — by regularly consuming a protein supplement mixed into coffee.

“The fact I have a few thousand people a day reading what I write — that’s kind of cool,” he said. And, yes, it is exhausting. Sometimes, he said, “I just want to lie down.” Sometimes he does rest, inadvertently, falling asleep at the computer.

“If I don’t hear from him, I’ll think: Matt’s passed out again,” said Brian Lam, the editor of Gizmodo. “It’s happened four or five times.”

The article continues on to report on two exhausted bloggers who dropped dead.