And by “me”, I am using, of course the Royal “Me” — meaning everyone who is working behind the scenes at the BlogHerald, including Mark (head heraldo), Abe Olandres, and J. Angelo Racoma.
Yes, its funny how far things have gone with my blogging hobby. It seems like I’m no longer in the space where I’d be overjoyed that someone (anyone) linked to me … and now find that I’m managing a growing stable of bloggers, and interacting daily with folks who are busting their butts trying to make one of the most venerable blogging brands “work”.
The title of “Assistant Editor” certainly implies as much, but yes, its funny that I am now “middle management”.
And what’s also funny, but in sort of a non ha-ha way, is how much “managing” eats out of your available time, where I’d otherwise be content to blog in my own snarky, run-on sentence kind-of way. Chatting it up with friends and contacts. Answering emails by the bail (and bale)-ful. And dousing out fires where I see them.
Case in point:
Lorelle VanFossen, in case you hadn’t heard, has joined our little family at the BlogHerald, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Not with myself of course, as it was J. Angelo Racoma who did the “getting” (and deserves big props for that).
Just pleased in general, rather.
I have been a huge fan of her work, and for the uninitiated, Lorelle’s blog is absolutely required reading on Wordpress. Seeing as we all have some kind of Wordpress set up, yes, that means its pretty much required reading for everyone. How to set things up, getting into the nitty gritty of installing stuff, hacking stuff, and pretty much understanding stuff — Lorelle is where its at.
However, one of the great intangibles about her working with us is how she’s bringing keen professional eye to all the things we’re doing and not doing. Getting an understanding for contracts, rights, and copyrights are things we’re still grappling with as evolving publishing entity. But, I think its something that’s long over due — and a measure of how much trust and faith our bloggers have in us to pretty much blog as they have. We’re doing what we can to earn that trust.
Another thing is our design. I love Chris Pearson. I love Pearsonified. But I think a new turn in the BlogHerald deserves a new theme — and its coming, believe me (just don’t ask when!). Lorelle has also taken a keen eye to how things are design, accessibility and standards-wise to us as well, and with all due respect to Chris’s work we’re making a few small adjustments in those latter respects.
However, things aren’t always coming up roses.
This past weekend, Dave Krug felt slighted when a post on 901am’s launch magically disappeared — thinking that it was in poor conduct, as 901am and the BlogHerald live in the same space (if not in the same neighborhood). He decided to blog about it on 901am as well as the BlogHerald.
Long story short: I am happy to say that I respected Dave Krug before, and I am happy to say that I still respect the man and consider him a friend in the business. It speaks to the importance of instant messaging that we were able to talk about it and hash out our differences. For those interested, we’re not really sure what happened to the 901am post, but it wasn’t taken down in malice. Nor were any other comments mentioned in malice. But I was happy to make things right as fast as I could. And I was thrilled that, at a moment of serendipity, Mark Saunders, the Capo Di Capo, was online at the same time — but in Sri Lanka at around 0300h local time. We were all on the same page, and it looks like we were all able to sort it out in a gentlemanly fashion.
As a spin off of that incident, Duncan Reily Riley got riled up (sorry Duncan, I couldn’t help it) because a link was removed in a housekeeping design issue. Basically we decided to clean up the author list as it was getting large and unwieldy, and removed his and Matt (Matt Craven’s) name from that list as they were from the “old guard”.
Duncan had a legitimate point though: his posts (all 3500+) of them are the foundation of the BlogHerald, and not recognizing them OR the man who created the institution was wrong.
At any rate, I apologized on 901am as well as Duncan’s own blog. He hasn’t replied or acknowedged it on either forum — and that’s his prerogative, I suppose. We have separate links for Matt and Duncan underneath the “About” section in the footer, and will have a separate “legacy” section, we hope in our new theme for their contributions. We hope we did right in a quick enough fashion, and we will strive to continue doing what’s right when something wrong has occurred.
And at the end of the day, that’s what we’re really all trying to do — and by “we”, I don’t just mean Abe, j. Angelo and Mark. I mean all of the bloggers, all of whom are richly talented, and of whom I am humbled and honored to work with and be associated with.
We’re trying to create something at the BlogHerald that is new, interesting and exciting — and we’re going to make mistakes along the way. But we’re not out to do anyone wrong — even, nay, especially, our distinguished competition. We know its up to us to make a name for ourselves, and we hope by creating a stable of great and honest bloggers we’re taking the first steps to doing so.
So yes — that’s why I haven’t been blogging for the past few days. ;)
If you haven’t checked out the BlogHerald recently, go on and do so. That’s where I spend as much as time as I do here, and let me know how things are going. We can only make it better together, and please — be as brutally honest as you like. With all the events of late, I’m getting a thicker, crustier, skin as the hours and days go by. :)
Its been a crazy nutter week for me, what with busy clinical responsibilities, and it seems to be culminating in some personnel changes at the BlogHerald. For the past 5 weeks or so, Abe “Yugatech” Olandres has been at the helm of the ship as the Editor. However, he’s run into some changes with his personal and professional responsibilities, and we’ve agreed to switch roles.
