Blogger Guilt Trips

At some point in every blogger's life, someone is going to ask you why you do it. For some bloggers, particularly the proprietors of the larger blogs, it's a career. They make a living (such as it is) from advertising, or donations, or other revenue streams. Those are the lucky ones who, because they aren't sitting at a desk in an office building someplace, can cover all the important stories. For the rest of us, we have to pick and choose. And what we pick and choose depends on why we blog.

Like most political bloggers, I also dream of blogging being a second career (especially since my first career is so dependent on grant funding and my skill set tends to be ignored in anyone over the age of 40). But since at this point, that's a dream, I can't aspire to the kind of comprehensive coverage of every story that some other bloggers do. And because B@B is primarily a political blog, but also has elements of "Whatever The Hell I Feel Like Writing", sometimes there are Big Stories that I don't cover.

Another aspect of Big Stories is that they require a fair amount of analysis and understanding -- and sometimes we just don't have enough time during the hour in the morning we have free to read the news, look at other blogs, and try to write something coherent, to get every important story.

For a "serious" blogger, there are two big stories which warrant more coverage and which I admit to having neglected, and those are the Jena 6 case and the demonstrations in Burma/Myanmar. Pam has castigated the white blogger community for being missing in action on the Jena 6 story, and Jon Swift smacks down the progressive blogger community for falling down on the Myanmar story.

On these I plead guilty on both counts. It's logical that these stories would have warranted some attention here, certainly as much as the Mets' collapse, or musings on whether New Jersey's dependence on the pharmaceutical industry makes it the Michigan of tomorrow, or a cute ad from Honda. But one of the problems my co-bloggers have had is in determining what fits and what doesn't, because my tendency is to Potter Stewart the question: I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. Certainly an uprising involving Buddhist monks and one of the ugliest racial cases in this country in recent years should have warranted some attention here. But I'll be honest about why I haven't covered these: because I came into the story right in the middle.

When I sit down to write in the morning, I'm not a newspaper editor considering what the most newsworthy stories of the day might be. When I started this blog three years ago, it was for two reasons: one was because if I didn't find another outlet for my ranting, I was going to drive Mr. Brilliant out of his mind; and the other was to call the attention of family and friends to stories that I thought they might miss elsewhere, stories I thought were important.

I have a friend who doesn't follow politics. She is aware that things are very wrong in this country and she worries about her children's and grandchild's future, but doesn't get involved in politics. Last week she forwarded me a variation on the "Don't buy Petro Express gasoline because they're selling Citgo products and Citgo is owned by Hugo Chavez who hates our military, hates our president, and hates America. e-mail. I'm not sure why she does this; she knows I don't go for this kind of jingoistic crap. I'm not convinced she reads them before she sends them. She's one of the reasons I write.

There is certainly an argument to be made that both the Jena 6 case and the Burmese conflict warrant more attention than they've been given in the blogosphere. But I'm not sure that laying guilt trips on bloggers who haven't given them the attention they deserve is going to accomplish anything. None of us can cover everything. If there's a story you think I should cover, e-mail me -- especially if it's a story you've been covering in-depth. I'd be happy to link to your coverage. It makes a lot more sense to do that than do a half-assed job that re-invents the wheel and doesn't inform as well as someone who's put the time and effort into covering a story in depth. The notion of "blogwhoring" is viewed with much disfavor in Blogtopia (™ Skippy), but doesn't it make sense to not only promote your work, but ensure that the news you feel is important gets seen by more people?