Liberty's Blog

Daily News Article on Blogging

I was contacted by Mason Lerner of the Galveston Daily News just as I was headed off to Los Vegas. I emailed him back and gave him my cell number. Mason called me while I was returning to my room and recovering from a bufffet meal gone bad the night before. I was distracted and not in top form, none the less we went forward with the interview.

The point of interview was supposed to be about how my blog, and the blogosphere covers the Iraqi War. The only problem is that I don't blog much about the War. I am not there and others are a lot more capable of giving it the close scrutiny that it deserves. All in all Mason treats me pretty fairly decently for lousy interview on my part.

Cobarruvias uses his blog, BayAreaHouston, to share his views and spark dialogue.

“It provides discussion,” he said. “It provides a way for people to talk.”

Every article a blogger posts allows readers a chance to provide onsite feedback and commentary. Cobarruvias said the reason he became a blogger was to try and make people discuss the issues that they see or read in the news.

“The Iraq war is a perfect example,” he said. “People act as if we just stay the course, it will go away. It won’t.”

He recently featured a piece stating the only way to end the war quickly would be to reinstitute the draft. Such an opinion might seem likely to evoke a massive reader response, but nobody posted a comment.

That is why linking to other blogs and Web sites is so crucial for independent bloggers. With so many news sources out there, it is hard for individual blogs to attract traffic.

That does not faze Lloyd, who posts to his blog under the handle “Liberty.”

“I would write the same if I had a quarter million readers or no readers at all,” he said. “I do it for myself. It’s my means of expression.”

According to his own count, he has had 1,762 visitors to his blog since he began counting on Oct. 2.

He said traffic was up to several thousand hits a day during Hurricane Rita because he posted throughout the evacuation. A few major media outlets linked to Libertysblog for on-the-spot hurricane updates.

He said the main responsibility of bloggers in the context of the war in Iraq was to keep track of “what is really happening as opposed to the mainstream media focusing only on who got killed today.”

I don't get concerned to much about the hit count but its now over 7,000 visits since Oct 2nd, lots of search engine hits on the Osteen affair. While Mason focused on the Trent Lott story on how bloggers can make a difference, I discussed with him the 60 minutes and Rathergate on how blogs can do factfinding and push a story to the forefront. I believe it is a more classic example of the power of blogs and the blogosphere.

While he mentions the both this blog and Bay Area Houston Blog He never gives out a link or URL.

This isn't the first time that this blog has been mentioned in the MSM but it is nice when the hometown paper takes notice. Maybe next time the paper might take notice of some of the other fine sites on the Island. Such as the Galveston Music Scene, or the Real Galveston.

posted by Liberty @ 6:43 PM