|
|
The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
Oh My God, the RSS Feed Actually Works!
Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
"The Blah is becoming a daily destination for me." - Richard Marsh, Playwright
"I like it, and I don't." - Fiona Hogg, Teacher
"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
Friends, Bloggers, Countrymen ... lend your ears to these people. I come not to bury them, but praise them.
Arik
Bill
Dan
Cole
Emily B
Emily G
Helena
Jee
Jewelz
Kaila
Kathryn
Mac
Robin
Slim
Souris
Mr. West
My TIME articles
All magazine articles (subscription required for older stories)
Online column index
|
|
|
|
|
Daily Blah for... Monday, December 20, 2004
Day of the Lost Lunches
For the last couple of weeks I've had to field that annoying annual question. Say it with me now: "so, Chris who is Time's man of the year?" The question came up rather more often this last week, since I was technically on vacation and yet happened to be writing a story for Time at the same time. Explain this conundrum, I was ordered at a good dozen or so Christmassy social gatherings. And I'd shrug and say, "well, it's the Person of the Year issue." This would invariably elicit a blank stare. "Person of the Year?" I'd add. "You know, like Man of the Year?"
So much for the magazine's attempt to be politically correct. Person of the Year has been our official in-house designation (or rather, POY has) and has been branded in full on every POY cover since Jeff Bezos in 1999. But Man of the Year is the unofficial brand name, the one everyone out there in Readerland remembers and the one they always ask about at parties. I keep waiting for this to change, but it's been five years now. To be fair, only one of those covers featured anything but men.
Regardless, POY is our biggest issue of the year -- biggest in sales, biggest in size. You don't get out of writing a story for POY, even if it's not the main story, and even if you are on vacation. So that's why. "Oh," my interrogators would respond, then think for a minute, and come out with The Question. "Sorry, I can't tell you," I'd reply, and suggesting their best bet would be to buy me lots of cocktails in case they shook my tongue loose.
One time at the Orbit Room I was taken up on this offer, and many cocktails later I was indeed ready to tell. But then I thought about the disappointment and the disgust I'd put on the faces of my friends by doing so, and the whole horrible conversation that would follow. "You really don't want to know," I said. "It would be a major downer." Or as I put it to my friend Lynn yesterday: "You'd loose your lunch. In fact, your lunch would be down the street hailing a cab."
Now the news is out—it's W.—and I imagine an awful lot of lunches will be cabbing around the city-states of Blue America today. And I'll be gearing up my second stock response, the one I used to deflect criticism the last time W. was picked, in 2000: "Well, you know, Hitler was chosen once. Stalin twice. And the Ayatollah in '79. [No, Red Staters, before you bother writing that knee-jerk comment, I am not saying W. is as bad as any of these guys.] Man of the year doesn't mean best man, just the one with the most impact." That usually does the trick. In the few cases where I'm still confronted with moral outrage, I'll add that it wouldn't have been my choice -- Karl Rove would have been far more representative of this year's awful political truth -- but could you imagine Rove's pudgy white face grinning out at you from supermarket check-out lines across the country? "Clean up on aisle 7, please. We've got more lost lunches here."
Anyway, here's the story that cost me a couple days of vacation. It's called Ten Things We Learned About Blogs.
Radio had its golden age in the 1930s. In the 1950s, it was television's turn. Historians may well date the golden age of the blog from 2004—when Merriam-Webster.com's most searched-for definition was blog. How long can it last? Who knows? Here's what we discovered about the new medium this year
By CHRIS TAYLOR
Blogging Can Get You Fired
When Delta flight attendant Ellen Simonetti, 30—a leggy blond and self-styled "queen of the sky"—began her blog, she thought it would be fun to post pinup snapshots of herself in uniform. Delta wasn't amused and promptly fired her. Undaunted, Simonetti retitled the blog Diary of a Fired Flight Attendant and detailed her legal battle to get her job back.
GO TO: queenofsky.journalspace.com
Bloggers Get Scoops Too
After book editor Russ Kick read that the U.S. military was clamping down on press photos of coffins coming back from Iraq, he didn't just pen an angry rant on his blog, the Memory Hole. He filed a Freedom of Information Act request—and embarrassingly for the Pentagon, was mailed a CD from the Air Force with 361 coffin snaps, which he promptly posted. The national press, which hadn't thought to ask whether the military had pictures, beat a path to Kick's door.
GO TO: thememoryhole.org
Bloggers Keep News Alive
So your blog hasn't succeeded in getting national attention for your pet issue? Don't lose heart. Just blog, link and repeat. It worked for conservative bloggers like Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, who trumpeted the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's claims this summer, as well as for liberal blogs like Daily Kos, which investigated evidence that President Bush wore a wire in his first debate. Some of the issues had questionable merit, but persistent bloggers made the subjects tough to ignore. Say it enough times online, and someone is bound to hear you.
GO TO: Instapundit.com, dailykos.com
Bloggers Can Be Titillating
In May a blog graphically detailing the sex life of an anonymous Capitol Hill staff member prompted D.C.'s most intriguing game of guess-the-author since Primary Colors. Jessica Cutler, a.k.a. Washingtonienne, was later outed and fired by her boss, Ohio Republican Mike DeWine, for "inappropriate use of Senate computers." (Her site is not for kids.) In another sign of the times, her first postfiring interview was with Wonkette, another Washington blogger.
GO TO: washingtoniennearchive.blogspot.com, wonkette.com
Bloggers Can Be Fakers
Plain Layne, a highly personal blog supposedly belonging to a Minnesota lesbian named Layne Johnson that drew thousands of fans over 3 1/2 years before mysteriously disappearing, was revealed to be a hoax. Hundreds of fans helped track down the real author, Odin Soli, 35, a male entrepreneur from Woodbury, Minn. Later in the year, fake Bill Clinton and Andy Kaufman blogs became hits.
GO TO: plainlayne.dreamhost.com, billclintondailydiary.blogspot.com
Bloggers Make Money
Earn a living in your pajamas! Online ads (along with Google's automated ad server) allow popular bloggers to go pro. Joshua Micah Marshall of talkingpointsmemo.com, a political blog, says he makes $5,000 a month from banner ads—enough to hire a research assistant.
GO TO: talkingpointsmemo.com
Most Bloggers Are Women
Men may have taken the lead in the early (read: geeky) days of blogging, but that's not the case now. According to a survey of more than 4 million blogs by Perseus Development, 56% were created by women. More bad news for the boys: men are more likely than women to abandon their blog once it's created. Call blogging a 21st century room of one's own.
GO TO: blogsisters.blogspot.com
Candidates Love Blogs
O.K., so Howard Dean never wrote his blog. But his campaign workers posted a surprisingly intimate online diary of life on the road, and Dean had collected $20 million in contributions via the Internet alone by the end of January 2004. It didn't take long for other politicos to catch on. When New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer announced that he was running for Governor this month, he did so on his blog.
GO TO: blog.deanforamerica.com, spitzer2006.com
Pets Have Blogs Too
It started as an in-joke among feline-friendly bloggers: why not post pictures of their cats every Friday afternoon? Friday catblogging became a hit, and soon even NASA was playing along by posting pictures of the Cat's Eye nebula.
GO TO: carnivalofthecats.com
Anyone Can Do It
Blogs wouldn't be such a democratic medium if they weren't so easy to set up. The most popular service, Blogger, owned by Google, boasts features like push-button photoblogging. Microsoft has launched a trial version of its own blogging service.
GO TO: blogger.com, spaces.msn.com
|
|
|
|
