Brainshrub.com - Tips For Political Bloggers Audio Show

Jonathan Singer of MyDD

Paul -V- — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:00:00 -0400

Today we have on the phone Jonathan Singer, political writer and editor for the progressive group blog MyDD.com. In June 2004, Singer began blogging about American politics on his own site and Daily Kos. He quickly became known for his numerous interviews with former presidential candidates, such as Walter Mondale, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, George McGovern, John B. Anderson and others. During the summer of 2005, Singer covered congressional elections and telecommunications issues for the "The Hill", a Capitol Hill newspaper.

In November 2005, Singer was tapped to be an editor of MyDD, a position he has held since. Writing for the site during the 2006 election cycle, Singer broadened his interview series to include Democratic senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial candidates around the country.

Today Jonathan gives up-and-coming bloggers some career advice if they want to make blogging a profession. He shares some insights into how the net-roots gained credibility in 2006, and, why the blogosphere could be considered a political interest group unto itself.

I ask Jonathan how he balances his duel rolls as a blogger versus journalist, and, we talk about some of the differences between the conservative and progressive elements of the blogosphere.

Topics covered: MyDD - Jonathan Singer - Journalism - blogging - politcal blogging - Net Roots - Democrats - conservative blogs - progressive blogs - career advice for bloggers

(You must have FlashPlayer installed on your computer to use the player below. If you have problems with the audio, Click here to listen, then use the contact form at the top of this blog to alert me.)

Celestina Adams of Newsvine and Celestiniosity.com

Paul -V- — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 04:00:00 -0400

Today we have in the studio the writer who posts under the blogonym Celestina Adams. Celestina is one of the top posters at the news site NewsVine. Her column can be at: Celestina.newsvine.com. She also started her own blog at: Celestiniosity.com.

Celestina and I discuss the advantages, and disadvantages, of using the large community website as a platform for blogging. She also gives some quick lessons on the vocabulary, traditions and overall culture of the NewsVine community.

Celestina goes into detail about the opportunities that have opened up for her because of her involvement with the site, such as her correspondence with with two men who were released from Guantanamo Bay 2005. Finally, Celestina gives tips to those starting out with NewsVine on how they can become successful and accepted NewsVine contributors.

Topics covered: Celestina - NewsVine - Celestiniosity - Internet Culture - News Blog - Guantanamo - Blogging

Open call to conservative bloggers

Paul -V- — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:36:39 -0400

I am looking for conservative bloggers to interview for: Tips for Political Bloggers radio show. (TPB-rs)

Most of the broadcasts thus far have featured Liberal bloggers and activists. This hasn't been intentional, it's just, as a Liberal myself, my social network naturally extends to other like-minded individuals.

Furthermore, every request I've sent to a conservative blogger to be interviewed has been ignored. This could be because they are nervous I'm trying to entrap them or otherwise make them sound foolish.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The purpose of TPB-rs is two-fold:

To act as an audio archive of internet activism, so...
Bloggers can learn from one another in order to improve the entire medium.

I'm confident once I've interviewed a few conservatives, word will quickly spread that I'm actually a very friendly guy who's easy to speak to.

Therefore, if you are a Republican, Libertarian, Fundamentalist-Christian, militarist or otherwise a pro-conservative blogger: Please contact me!

I am genuinely interested in what you have to say. You are a valuable part of the blogosphere.

Sincerely,

Paul -V-

brainshrub -a-t- gmail -d-o-t- -c-o-m-

Donohue of The Catholic League and McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister discuss recent controversy

Paul -V- — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 13:10:42 -0500

At the end of January of 2006, the John Edwards for President campaign hired two bloggers: One was Melissa McEwan of Shakespearessister.blogspot.com, who was hired to do outreach to other progressive blogs. The other was Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon.net who was hired to be the campaign's blogmaster.

Within a week, the conservative organization Catholic League, which defends to institution of the church from what it perceives as defamation, proclaimed the two bloggers as Christian-hating bigots because of content they wrote on their respective websites which criticized and lampooned church teachings.

When the Edwards campaign refused to fire them, Blogger Michele Malkin and pundit Bill O'reilly helped publicize the controversy. Within a few days the two women were not only gets mounting pressure from the media to resign, but they also started death and rape threats.

Fed up with the pressure, and not seeing a way to end the escalating threats and criticisms that were hurting the John Edwards campaign, On February 12 Marcott announced her resignation, McEwan did the same the following day.

What ramifications does this incident have for the blogoshere? Are political bloggers expected to only hold polite opinions if they are work on a political campaign? Should a politician be held culpable for content written on a bloggers site before they are hired? Will this incident prevent campaigns from hiring bloggers in the future? How should a blogger respond when faced with a media feeding frenzy about something they've written?

To get answers to these questions, today I have two of the key players in this unfolding story. First, I will interview Bill Dononue, President of the Catholic League and the man who started the accusations of bigotry against the two bloggers by pointing out the material they had written which he found offensive to the press; then, I'll have an opportunity to talk to Melissa McEwan to get her side of the story and discuss what she's learned from this incident.

Topics covered: John Edwards - Bloggers - McEwan - Sheakesheressister - Marcotte - Pendragon.net - Donohue - Catholic League - Free Speech - Politics

Note: The sound board got a glitch during the interview - and therefore Donohue's interview sounds flat. This was not intentional, and the station manager at WPVM will vouch for this. Many apologies.

Interview with Lee Papa of RudePundit.blogspot.com

Paul -V- — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 06:00:00 -0500

(Note: This is another one of those interviews I did when I was still experimenting with the shows theme and style, and before I knew I could archive with Odeo. It was originally recorded in June of 2006 and is a bit more partisan than the current version of the show. I also noticed that I spoke a lot more than I should.)

Today I'll be interviewing Lee Papa: A writer, professor and performer who authors the popular blog RudePundit.blogspot.com. His two year old blog gets tens of thousands of readers each week from all over the world.

The New York Times calls Papa: "A tornado of a writer" and "a child of Lenny Bruce, Richard Prior and Hunter S. Thomson."

Lee's style does not pull punches. He is famous for strong language and graphic depictions of what he thinks Republican ideology is doing to the American working class. At the same time, RudePundit.blogspot is well written and thought out - a feature that many rant-only blogs don't necessarily have.

Today we are going to talk about the RudePundit.blogspot, and how to write the way people talk about politics amongst themselves.

We also discuss Papa's CD The Year of Living Rudely, some of the history of citizen journalism and the labor movement why it's important to occasionally "preach to the choir".

Topics covered: RudePundit - The Year of Living Rudely - Founding Fathers - Bagram's Heroes - Squirrel Monkey - labor history - blog traffic - Ani DiFranco - Ann Coulter plagerism - Reddit

Disclaimer: Lee Papa is not paying me anything to post a link to his CD in the side-bar of this blog. I gave him the space because he was the first "A lister" to to agree to an interview for this show.

Interview with Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association

Paul -V- — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0500

Today we have on the phone Robert Cox, Founder and President of the Media Bloggers Association. The Media Bloggers Association is a nonpartisan organization with three goals:

To promote, protect and educate its members about their rights and responsibilities.
To supporting the development of "blogging" or "citizen journalism" as a distinct form of media.
To help to extend the power of the press to every citizen.

Robert Cox first began blogging in 2002. He gained some notoriety in 2004 when the New York Times sought to shut down his blog, "Thenationaldebate.com", over his parody of their columnist correction policy.

Toady's conversation will cover the inspiration behind the Media Bloggers Association, how bloggers can protect themselves against lawsuits, the role that blogging is playing in journalism and education, and, the recent addition of bloggers in the courtroom of the Scooter Libby trail.

Topics covered: Media Bloggers Association - Maine Web Report.com lawsuit - City University of New York - Scooter Libby Trial - Legal tips for bloggers - Gannett - Journalism - Carnegie Foundation - Robert Cox

Interview with Bora Zivkovic of Scienceblogs.com/clock

Paul -V- — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 09:25:22 -0500

Today we have on the phone scientist and political blogger Bora Zivkovic, who was born in Belgrade in 1966 and moved to the United States in 1991. Bora started blogging on the John Edwards for President 2004 campaign website, and then went solo in August 2004 at Sciencepolitics.blogspot.com.

After the election he increasingly moved away from writing about politics, and focused more on his areas of expertise: biology, circadian rhythms, evolution, ecology, physiology and animal behavior. He is currently blogs on Seed Magazine's science blogs collective at Scienceblogs.com/clock.

Today we will talk about the similarities, and differences, between political and science blogs. We'll also discuss how blogging has influenced science and get some insights as to where Borra feels the future of science blogging lies.

(You must have FlashPlayer installed on your computer to use the player below. If you have problems with the player, Click here to listen, then use the contact form at the top of this blog to alert me.)

Tags: Science - Zivkovic - Science Blogs - Open Labratory - Seed Magazine - Political Blogging - Interview

Gordon of ScrutinyHooligans.blogspot.com

Paul -V- — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 05:00:00 -0500

This is an interview with Gordon Smith of Scrutinyhooligans.blogspot.com from June of 2006. Back then I was still stumbling around, experimenting with the equipment, and trying to figure out how to podcast this series without using up all my bandwidth.

While this aired at WPVM on June 12, I never had an opportunity to archive it properly; which was a shame because Gordon made a lot of astute observations about the blogosphere and how local blogs can help a candidate without being directly plugged into a campaign.

In this issue, we talk about Scrutinyhooligans.blogspot.com and his contributions to political campaigns in Western North Carolina.

(You must have FlashPlayer installed on your computer to use the player below. If you have problems with the player, Click here to listen, or use the contact form at the top of this blog to let me know.)

Tags: ScrutinyHooligans - blogging - tips for political bloggers - politics

Audio interview with "BlueGal" of Bgalrstate.blogspot.com

Paul -V- — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 05:00:00 -0500

Today we have on the phone the blogger who writes under the pseudonym "BlueGal" of bgalrstate.blogspot.com. Blue Gal is known for it's good writing as well as posting theme-panties on a regular basis.

In our conversation not only will we learn the story about how she got into the habit of posting those famous panties - we'll also discuss her traffic strategies, such as the observation that, by helping other blogs get attention, it naturally helps her own site's rankings. We'll spend some time talking about her experiences with the up-and-coming blog "ristocrats.blogspot.com". Finally, you'll get the inside-scoop of how Blue Gal won the 2006 Weblog Award in her traffic category.

Click the player below to hear the interview. (You must have FlashPlayer installed on your computer. If you have problems with the player, Click here to listen, or use the contact form at the top of this blog to let me know.)

Tags: blogs - blogging - community - panties - Weblog Award - Blue Gal

Audio interview with Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister

Paul -V- — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 04:00:00 -0500

Today we have on the phone Melissa McEwan, who is the founder and editor of the progressive political and cultural blog "Shakespeare's Sister".

Shakespeare's Sister was founded in 2004 as a simple single-person outlet for McEwan's writing, it has since grown into a successful "group blog" - where several other writers collaborate to form a vibrant community. In 2005 Shakespeare's Sister won the Koufax Award for Best Group Blog.

McEwan is a regular contributor to AlterNet and in 2006 a piece by McEwan on conservative repression and sexual impropriety was featured in Hustler magazine.

McEwan studied cultural anthropology, sexuality, and gender at Loyola University Chicago, and works primarily in marketing and concept development. She currently resides in suburban Chicago with two cats and a Scotsman.

Mellissa and I discussed the secrets of how she was able to attract great writers to contribute on Shakespeare's Sister, the importance of building community on a blog, and the story behind her writing philosophy.

Tags: blogging - interview - politics