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Yesterday I posted the excerpt from the recent Wired article on MilBlogs featuring Mudville. I requested readers comments on what they thought it implied about this blog and its author. Thanks to those who took time to respond - you've confirmed a number of things I suspected, not the least of which is the insightfulness of readers here. Here's a quote from Corrie I found particularly affirming:
The article came across as snarky. If the reader knows you, the writer looks snarky. If not, it makes you look snarky. But who cares, if it drives eyeballs here.And yes, the eyeballs are welcome. Whenever Mudville gets an all-too temporary boost like that I redouble my efforts to offer the full spectrum of MilBlog opinion, point to various charitable efforts, and generally try and behave like a good "gateway" to the blogosphere as a whole for those who might be only vaguely familiar with this new media.
By the way, here's the Wired passage in question:
One important milblogger who weighed in on the Jordan affair is a secretive 20-year-career Army GI who goes by the handle Greyhawk. His blog, the Mudville Gazette, investigated the incident and concluded that Iraq-based reporters disputed Jordan's claim. He's unhappy that a more thorough news investigation wasn't conducted. Other bloggers call Greyhawk "the father of us all" and credit him with coining the term milblogger shortly after he started Mudville in March 2003. In an email interview - Greyhawk wouldn't agree to "voice-com" or a "face-to face" - he writes proudly of his lifetime pageviews, which recently exceeded 1.7 million (700,000 of those have come in 2005): "Mudville is far and away the largest, oldest, widest-read active-duty MilBlog in the World. It's all in how you make the words line up and dance."And I like Corrie's response because it sums up the mild disagreement that the Mrs and I had over the article. Her position is summed up in the first three sentences of that comment, mine by all four.
All that by way of introduction to what follows. John Hockenberry and I exchanged emails early this year as he was preparing that article. Just about everything said in that paragraph above was something I wrote in one of those emails. I'm not unhappy with his use of them, I knew from the get go that I was giving him my words to use as he saw fit. But the quotes in their full context are, perhaps, of interest to those who might wonder about how such stories are constructed.
We had a much longer discussion than what follows, these are simply the questions that led to the paragraph above. (I'll likely address several topic areas that most reporters covering milblogs seem to leave out of their stories in a future post.)
Invariably, the questions I get include queries about those military bloggers who've "run afoul" of their command, or "had their sites shut down." After discussing that, Hockenberry offered this question:
What does the DoD think of your site?So there's that quote - a reference to how you avoid running afoul of your leadership while still blogging happily away.Me: I don't know - they don't know who I am, to the best of my knowledge, and I've never asked. I'm sure after running the site for 2 years I've got something to offend anybody though. Mudville is far and away the largest, oldest, widest-read active-duty MilBlog in the World. I got there by not being stupid about comsec, opsec, and other such issues that end a lot of other guy's aspirations early on. It's all in how you make the words line up and dance.
Next
Hock: QUESTION FROM THE HATED MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Do you have specific tallies of your hit rate average and peak to get a sense of your traffic? Your ads suggest that someone must be watching and I suspect that you are just borderline enough of an ego-maniac to check every couple of hours or so. WIRED wants some kind of official quantification of your hits. Can-do?Am I proud, or just willing to answer obnoxious questions? The key to the next passage is the timing - Eason Jordan was a hot story at the time. I'll add bold emphasis to something crucial in my response.Me: I don't hate the mainstream media. I've got a story now from Jules Crittenden on Mudville. I correspond with a number of reporters, editors, etc. Is Wired mainstream?
Hit counters are open to the public, the links are in the right column of the blog. Mudville gets around 4k visitors a week day, with weekends falling under 3k. Top days will see 20k+. Jan 05 was a peak month, (I was in Iraq and the elections were looming) with over 200k page views. Through the winter there were 150 - 180k page views a month. Lifetime we just went over 1,700,000 visits - it took almost two years to hit a million but the 700k visits were all in '05.
Hock: One other thing... any suggestion for a person (besides Eason Jordan) who might have observed the influence of the milbloggers in his crash and burn. Looking for an outsider quote without getting into too much detail. It's a sideline story in what has become a much larger piece.Then later I remembered another bit of info:Me: I wasn't much of a player in the Eason Jordan story. I thought the way it ended was unfortunate - it certainly wasn't what I wanted for an outcome. I don't know of any others and I sincerely hope no other stories end that way. I'd rather see the truth about any issue determined than to just have someone slink away.
Me: Almost forgot this one. While everyone else was shouting about Eason Jordan I was interviewing Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald, who was an imbed with the Army in the Thunder Run into Baghdad. Jules was a few meters away when a tank gunner fired a round into the Palestine Hotel killing two journalists and starting the myth that would later cost Jordan his job. In other words - while everyone else was demanding an investigation, I was investigating.In case you're wondering, I was concerned a "bloggers attack journalists" angle was forthcoming. To Hockenberry's credit, that was not the case. (The post I was referencing is here.)
There you have it. How sausage is made. Again, I have no complaint, and I thank John Hockenberry for the eyeballs that wandered this way.
But one final point. " Greyhawk wouldn't agree to "voice-com" or a "face-to face" " Yup, true. I prefer the absolute truth of the written record.
