This blog printed on 100% recycled electrons.
Jon Schaff and I just had a very pleasant conversation on South Dakota Public Radio. Alas, no partisan fireworks: Dr. Schaff and I appear to agree that blogs are generally a good thing for elected officials (if they can stand the occasional obnoxious comment) to use and that John Thune most likely will not be John McCain's VP choice.
In response to an on-air question from "Katie" about female bloggers in South Dakota, we both see a predominance of male voices. We came up with a few names of lady bloggers -- Erin Heidelberger, Denise Ross, Rebecca Terk, Anne Shirley, our regional friends at Dakota Women... oh! and don't forget Rep. Kristi Noem! I'm sure we missed a bunch of others, so ladies, feel free to submit your links.
Interestingly, Denise Ross says (right now, on SDPB, as I'm typing!) she doesn't think of herself as a "woman blogger," she just focuses on doing good work... as should we all!
SDPB's Cory Klumper talked about how SDPB could put a South Dakota blogroll on its website, but he's afraid they'd miss a bunch of blogs. Don't worry, Cory -- we all do! But there's one of the strengths of the SD blogosphere: we all have different interests, read different things, hang out with different people. What I miss, Jon Schaff or Todd Epp will catch. As a collective effort, we continue to provide a pretty good resource for people who want to read what a wide variety of South Dakotans think.
If Dr. Schaff and I disagree on anything, it's comment policy. South Dakota Politics remains comment-free, although they do take e-mails and frequently post and respond to those in full posts. There are certainly times when commenters can make me grit my teeth, but I find that minor bother is still outweighed by the value of open public conversation (as does Denise Ross).
And a special guest: Ben Hanten calls in to SDPB and says "blogs have become redundant" in their own personal "rants." His site, South Dakota 123, is the tool he says we really need to sift through the great quantity of words coming out of South Dakota and help people decide what of all this local coverage is really valuable.
"Redundant"? Well, maybe, but let's not jump the gun, Ben. Nothing wrong with a little self-promotion, but remember: South Dakota 123 needs South Dakota content to point to in the first place. ;-)
Thanks to SDPB for having us all on!
There is a runoff
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You can now go vote at the Minnehaha County Administration office Downtown
Sioux Falls at 6th and Minnesota Avenue. Your choices are Mr. Jordan
Deffenbaugh...
4 hours ago
Thanks for being on the show. It was my first time hosting that type of show and I think it went really well.
ReplyDeleteI really prefer the blogs that allow comments. Often the comments are better that the post they are responding to.
ReplyDeleteProbably a bad choice of words. You're right -- blogs and other sites are the content that make a social networking site work.
ReplyDeleteBut... yeah there is a lot of redunancy and a lot of in-fighting, which is by and large boring.
One thing I like about Madville Times is that you actually look for South Dakota content. I don't really understand why a site called South Dakota Politics reviews movies and barely writes about what's going on in their own state.
It was a fun discussion! Good to hear you on, Cory.
redunancy ---- hmmmmm
ReplyDeleteredundancy
Thanks, Ben!
ReplyDeleteIt is tough to express our full ideas in nice, tight sound nuggets for broadcast (feel free to review the audio to hear how hard that is for me!).
I do agree with your elaboration about in-fighting; disagreements on our blogs are interesting only to the extent that they reflect larger disagreements in the state.
There are lots of female bloggers in South Dakota, including several in Madison. I would assume you are meaning women who blog mainly on politics. The women I read focus more on family and daily life, though they do include politics and especially values occasionally.
ReplyDeleteI would like to have been able to listen to the show.
DRK
Thanks for reminding me, DRK! I've seen a lot of those local blogs. I added a number of them to my "Lake County Blogs" list last spring, but the ladies all asked me to remove their links because they didn't want anyone to be able to track them or their kids down. So their blogs are more private. I focus on the blogs engaging in public discourse.
ReplyDeleteBut you're right, DRK -- there is a remarkable subculture of family blogging going on, kind of like scrapbooking online. Cool!
Oh, I forgot: DRK, if you'd like to hear the program, check out SDPB's website. They haven't posted the audio yet, but it should appear either here or here soon. Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Cory, for the hat tip!
ReplyDeleteOf course, had I known it was coming, it mightn't have posted that dead opossum image! Ah, well...
--Rebecca
I would have called in and said "Hello" if SDPB did not continue to ban me from their noon forum.
ReplyDeleteWhat was partially missed in the discussion was that Blog systems are actually very inexpensive and very easy to use content management systems. CMS was very expensive or very time consuming prior to blogs and made the web a playgound mainly for corporations and media with a lot of money to pay HTML or CMS specialists.
As soon as I started blogging and found the advantages of that, I contacted SDPB and suggested they start using blogs. That was something like 4 or 5 years ago. Not sure if they really have any blogs yet. The same was true for the SD Democratic Party. It took them over two years before they got around to Dakota Blue or whatever.
Anybody with any writing talent at all should take a shot at blogging..unless of course they have hopes of being elected to anything if they post any political news and opinion.