Mominem has transferred and updated the list of 100+ New Orleans bloggers using ThinkNOLA’s new wiki tool. During the transfer, we were often asked via email what exactly constitutes a New Orleans blog. I’d say that anyone who shows an interest in New Orleans and blogs about it is a New Orleans blogger by default, no matter his or her citizenship, politics, or disposition. You know, someone who keeps the NOLA brand out there but not by committing murder. We are neither an online clique (we’ll take anyone, me included) nor eSalonists (a considerable amount of what is written under the aegis of “NOLA Blogging” is reporting in itself or has influenced reporting on New Orleans). We are what we are – average people with blogs who pass on the message to those in our circle and others who chance upon our blogs.
All bloggers are not civic activists, just as all civic activists are not bloggers. The overlap of the two circles is where I like to exist but with a friendly nod or two to the fact that I do have a life and job outside of this medium. A lot of the time, blogging is a broadcast of serious and fun, news and opinion over a medium which is broadcast widely indexed, searchable, not email, and most definitely not the telephone. Again, as I recently commented at Leigh’s, there are people who do more for and know a lot more about this town who have never even heard of a blog and probably will not post to one in their lifetimes. Furthermore, not everything we do and worry over makes it to this particular aspect of our outward expression. In fact, if anyone lives his or her whole life online, including and especially the most interesting bits, it would be very hard for me to take this person seriously.
We are who we are, but we can be more. Swallowing a bitter pill, I have to agree with David that our collective effort has the potential for more sophistication and really taking on the government and media, if that is indeed what he suggests.
All bloggers have different ideas about what they want to do with their blogs, and the following certainly isn’t aimed at bloggers like Karen or Ray who use their blogs as an adjunct to civic activism or to organize reconstruction related activities; they have my utmost respect. The same applies to the few “citizen journalists,” like Dambala or Matt McBride, who have the ability to do actual reporting. This applies to the vast majority of “citizen journalists” who are more or less in the op-ed business. Aside from stroking their own egos, such bloggers should occasionally ask themselves what their [sic] trying to accomplish with their blogs.
Yes, yes, I know very well my own rhyme, “It’s my blog, it’s my dime, it’s my space, it’s my time” and the adage of “If you don’t like it, don’t read it,” but let’s move beyond that to figure out what more we can do keeping in mind our physical, emotional, and access-to-data limitations. It is hard to write a post of real substance that truly helps New Orleans past keeping this city on the front-burner of our friends’ thoughts. In order to make it easier, we need the proper tools and the information. For instance, I would never have learned what I did about the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association and their work in the Lower Ninth Ward if it weren’t for my in through the University of Wisconsin Water Resources Management practicum team. This is also precisely why I have Bart Everson, Karen Gadbois, Sarah Lewis and Eban Walters.
There is no way I wish to write here because I’m Mizz Maitri V-R and have access to a computer, and this is yet another way for me to get attention. At the same time, I am Maitri, with a full-time job, a couple of other HUGE offline community affiliations and a myriad other obligations. But, somehow ALL of us with our 5000 obligations find the time to write, read and listen on these blogs. Should we not try to make this truly worthwhile by learning and growing in our self-appointed positions as The Bringers Of New Orleans News. Or, is living in New Orleans (or writing about it from afar) and being our fabulous selves enough?
Back to David, does he want us to close shop? Should something change in our “reporting” and writing instead? What tips does David have to offer that would make us better writers? Instead of reinventing the internet, let me post a portion of the response I left David at his blog:
… bloggers (all of us, you and me included) have to have some kind of mental problem to write in this medium everyday and without fail. We are, by nature, self-centered, navel-gazing and egotistical, or would never have taken up the ePen in the first place …
That said, what happened in New Orleans gave me and a lot of others the opportunity to take our navel-gazing toy and turn it into a tool of civic activism. The nature of the medium changes based on [how] YOU define it. I have more than a dozen faithful readers who DO NOT live in New Orleans who now read your blog, mine and the hundred others, and this is a direct result of my blog and its place in our network.
Of course, I’m an amateur, but I write with a quickness and passion sometimes, which the local and global MSM are sometimes incapable of. That is worth something in the search for more news on a topic not covered.
… So, I’d say that instead of raking “a clique of salonists” (if only I had the time or patience for such a construct) over the coals for not reporting up to your standards, show each of us, teach us how to take each of our blogs to a higher level. I’m all ears.
… As for the self-serving bit, blogging and commiserating in this manner is a form of therapy, at least to me. Also, sex sells, David, and you know it. I wrote a heartfelt, bloody-eyed post on what it is to be an American today and got two comments. Meanwhile, Vitter’s fetishes elicited giggles all over the internet. Such is the nature of media, be it paper, TV or blog. Why do you think I’m trying to Make Civic Sexy?
… Teach me, David, show me what/how to do and I will gladly learn. Until then, please join us at Rising Tide (exposure) and tell us exactly how to move this medium and its current incarnation in NOLA onward and upward.
David’s point comes through loud and clear – he wants more people, people other than him, asking the questions that matter, not just saying that we are or will. This is when I again bring up the point that in order to do so, we need access. Access to information and an inner strength that, as the kids these days say, take what we’re doing to an even higher level. We are and can all be reporters of new information, but only if we are in a good place from which to do it.
For me, this may take some streamlining of the various things I’m involved with in New Orleans. Then again, I blog probably 10% of what I do in real life, if that, and I cannot blog the really interesting and informative industry work I do because it’s sensitive information.
