Blogger Meeting notes

George Nemeth of Brewed Fresh Daily wraps up the July Cleveland Weblogger Meetup with a picture, a list of everyone's blog, and reminds us of our homework. Our homework was to list our three favorite blogs, aside from BFD which is required reading here in Ohio for bloggers, and also the blogs we visit at least every two days.

We covered a lot of topics. First up was media and elections. George assured Steve Fitzgerald of Lakewood Life that Doug Clifton, of the PeeDee,was the target of the appelation "asshat" that George threw out there. Much was considered with the idea of having bloggers interview mayoral condidates. Bill Callahan of Callahan's Cleveland Diary talked about possible ways to do this, noting that we need to ask candidates questions in person. Otherwise, as he put it, we'd get a journalism grad (or student) from their campaign filling out a questionaire with talking points. George said he considered the "sponsorship" of the SPJ (Society of Professional Journalists) to be more of a way to get the candidates to consider taking our questions. It seemed to be a consensus that editorial control would not be something happening in any event - which is sometimes a good thing.

This dovetailed a bit into a discussion on the media. John Etorre had an observation to the generally anti-Editor crowd there, that the writer can sometimes steer the editorial process to not lose control. He once had an editor tell him that "I felt like you were the editor, and I was the writer!". Jeff Hess of Have Coffee, Will Write had a keen observation:

It's not the difference between journalists and bloggers, but between reporters and bloggers. They're all journalists!

Tim Russo advised that to drive traffic, write what you care about and market. His technique is to email a link to bloggers who may decide to link to him based on the post. He emphasized writing what you care about - "..it's transparent if you are trying to BS."

Loreale - new to blogging, with no blog yet - was given advice and had questions on starting a blog, and whether it's best to be anonymous. I favour that position (too late for me!). The only downside I suppose is that I can't whine about annoying coworkers, but perhaps it's best as I can't imagine that's very interesting to anyone besides me.

We also talked about how many blogs we read. which led to the homework assignment (linked above). Few people who need to sleep can keep up with all the blogs they'd like to, and may start to get blog-fatigue. Jack Ricchiuto of jackzen had the best line of the night, about why he likes browsing on Flikr: "Best of all, there's no fucking words!"