My other community blog, BlountViews, is discussed in this Maryville Daily Times report on blogging in Blount Co. There are also remarks by yours truly.

Too funny - a new Roy Edroso feature in the Village Voice profiles various right-wing blowhards, just in time for the 2008 election season.

Glenn Reynolds profile here.

Heh. Indeed.

(VRWC = vast right wing conspiracy)

I'm glad Edroso reads this stuff... so I don't have to.

Caught this on the WBIR RSS feed. Interesting that they are going the citizen blogger route, rather than expanding their reporter/blogger presence.

The Mrs. and I had the pleasure of meeting up with Fletch, the legendary photo blogger and self-proclaimed high-tech drifter. He's a super nice guy and just as peaceful and laid back in person as his photo blogging suggests.

We had breakfast at the Flagler Beach Pier Restaurant, and took a stroll around Flagler Beach and down to a nice county park on the Intercoastal Waterway. Fletch then took us a few miles further up A1A for a tour of the Washington Oaks State Park.

It's always nice to finally meet bloggers in person, especially someone who you feel like you sort of already know after five years in the blogosphere. Fletch's home base is in the Smoky Mountains and ours is in the foothills, but for some reason we had never met up before today, in Florida of all places.

Fletch and Bubba

Jack Lail's op-ed column in today's KNS opinion section. (KnoxViews is mentioned!)

Some recent additions to the blogroll and the blog-o-rama feed:

• Liberal writer/blogger Carole Borges

• WNOX news man Michael Grider

• The Halls Shopper Tabloid Boy (aka Larry Van Guilder)

Check 'em out.

After reading countless blogs, I've come up with "R. Neal's Information Value Hierarchy", listed here in decreasing order of value.

1. Facts
2. Analysis
3. Opinion
4. Feelings
5. Your cat

Facts: Nobody can argue with facts. Well, they'll try.

Analysis: Trying to make sense of the facts, to answer the question "what does this mean?"

Opinions: Theirs is right and yours is wrong. Except, informed opinion backed up with facts and analysis can sometimes be persuasive, especially coming from experts on a subject.

Feelings: Nobody cares about your feelings. Don't just say "This pisses me off!" Explain why using facts and analysis. Convince people why they should be pissed off about it, too.

Cats: Would somebody please get those cats a freaking cheezburger?

Adapted from a presentation on blogging I gave a while back

We've been invited by Knoxville News Sentinel Online Managing Editor Jack Lail to participate in an innovative election news project at Publish2.

You'll notice a new "TN Election News" section over on the left with headlines from election related articles that have been tagged by editors and bloggers from around the state.

Read more about the project (still in beta) here. Michael Silence has a list of participants here. Jack Lail has more background here.

The weekly Tennessee Liberal Blog roundup is posted over at TennViews.

Also, check out the TennViews exclusive state legislature preview.

A TennViews "Jingle Bells" edition of the weekly sampling from some of Tennessee's best and brightest bloggers.

WBIR has launched a new metablog, KnoxvilleTalks.com:

KnoxvilleTalks.com offers lively and opinionated conversation for East Tennessee’s lively and opinionated blogging community. Hosted by WBIR, KnoxvilleTalks is managed and edited by WBIR.com Online Producer and newsroom blogger Katie Allison Granju.

A weekly sampling from some of Tennessee's best and brightest bloggers:

The East Tennessee SPJ chapter is sponsoring a workshop on shooting video for the web. The workshop is Nov. 29th at 7PM at the Knoxville News Sentinel.

John Cole:

You know, it has barely been a month since the Malkin/Limbaugh/Wingnuttosphere freak-out over the MoveOn ad, but I think it is worth noting the clear message:

Questioning a political General is treason, bullying a 12 year old is patriotic.

Indeed.

This Friday's Blount County Democrats luncheon included a presentation on Blogging 101. Our gracious KnoxViews and BlountViews host was the presenter.

The meeting was quite fascinating. This is the first one we have attended. Fridays are very busy for us. Customers!

Read more here.

The Atlas Society and its Objectivist Center have an article with a brief history of blogging (in their opinion), Atlas Mugged: How a Gang of Scrappy, Individual Bloggers Broke the Stranglehold of the Mainstream Media.

There is also discussion on the future of blogging with Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit.

The Knoxville News Sentinel recently issued a call for bloggers to help cover the upcoming KNS v. Knox County Commission trial. The reasoning was that because the newspaper is the plaintiff, they needed independent coverage.

Jack McElroy announced on his blog that three bloggers have been selected. They are Rich Hailey, David Oatney, and Russ McBee. From McElroy's description, it sounds as though they will mostly be covering the coverage, not necessarily the trial itself (maybe Russ can elaborate on how that will work).

Anyway, its an interesting experiment in citizen journalism. I'm not sure a newspaper has ever done anything like this before. Once again, the KNS is way out front in working with the the local blogger community.

Here's some interesting local blog news. The KNS will launch a new site this afternoon called "Knoxville Blog Network" (a/k/a Knoxville Blog Buzz). You can preview it here.

It's a centralized blog aggregator/blogroll for area blogs similar to the old Rocky Top Brigade, and it's done in partnership with BlogNetNews.

Stay tuned to Michael Silence's blog for the official announcement, expected later this afternoon.

UPDATE: Here's the announcement, with some background on what it is and how it works from Jack Lail.

PayPerPost.com was a startup just last summer. "Advertisers pay to post details about their "opportunity," specifying, among other things, how they want bloggers to write about, say, a new shoe, if they want photos to be included, and whether they'll pay only for positive mentions. Bloggers who abide by the rules get paid; heavily trafficked blogs may command premium rates."

They were able to get $3 million in funding last fall. "...Josh Stein, venture capitalist with DFJ, who led the deal, and he’s steadfast in his belief that the company is doing a "good, valuable" service. He concedes it’s controversial: "Like many things, if you look at the most cynical interpretation of it, you could see how it could be a source for bad."

Something must be working, PayPerPost has now received an additional $10 million in venture capital. "PayPerPost has about 8,700 advertisers and 50,000 bloggers. Most advertisers choose neutral reviews because bloggers are more likely to take those, company officials said." ... "Videoblogger Loren Feldman has called PayPerPost "capitalism at its finest."

I don't know about capitalism at its finest. They certainly have done the job right to get $13 million in venture capital in a year. I'm working on my idea to get $13 million. I'll let you know as soon as I know what that idea is.

(ED. NOTE: Making this sticky for the afternoon. Rikki and Betty are providing running commentary in the comments...)

The County Commission meeting is moments away from starting and it appears to be a good crowd in the audience. A couple of quick links here I found on the online version of the KNS today.

Jack McElroy weighs in today on lawsuit:

“Thoughts on settling sunshine suit”
Link...

News Sentinel reporter Scott Barker will be live blogging from Monday's County Commission meeting. Stay tuned for his updates.

Link...

And we all hope Commissioner Harmon will be online as well.

LET THE FUN AND GAMES BEGIN!

It's spreading like a virus.

My Monday morning schedule was all messed up from staying out 'till 4AM trying to photograph meteors, so I was just now getting caught up on this week's reading when I saw this. Thanks, Sandra! The check's in the mail.

UPDATE: SayUncle responds, as does the original poster. Some of the comments are hilarious. At least SayUncle seems to sort of get the point.

Every now and then I go over to see what they're talking about at SayUncle's, because I've met the guy and he's OK (other than being maybe a little too obsessed with guns and the 2nd Amendment), and occasionally there's an interesting post about blogging or local politics (except for some off-the-deep-end posts by #9 which he allows there).

But apparently Uncle's gone on vacation, and given the keys to his blog to a bunch of his gun-nut blog buddies. Usually I just ignore that stuff, but this post was rather shocking.

More...

The Knoxville News Sentinel has launched a new website focused on local school issues. It's called School Matters, and has blogs, forums, and social networking features. You'll notice some familiar names from around the Knoxville blogosphere among participants.

According to the site info, it is built on Ning, a hosted social networking service with free or business/private label branding options. Ning looks like a pretty slick package.

I hate to poke fun at fellow bloggers, being in a glass house and all, but... seriously?:

As I sat down to watch 30 Rock tonight (best show on tv? Quite possibly) a little bit about the election returns ran which slapped me upside the head and reminded me that, oh yeah, it’s a big day here in Nashville. I thought as long as I’m going to spend the evening catching up on TV and watching the Astros/Braves game, I might as well hang around here and keep everyone up to date on the returns.

[blah blah]

8:45 - Now Howard Gentry is conceding. I guess we know who our mayoral runoff candidates will be. Although I still don’t understand why we have to have a runoff. Can any of you explain that for my pea sized brain?

[blah blah]

My parting shot is this…I can’t believe that only 100,000 votes were cast. That just blows my mind.

OK, then. WKRN needs to get Nashville is Talking 2.0 launched pretty quick. And they need more bloggers like this to bring more stuff like this. (And maybe leave the election blogging to this guy.)

(With sincere apologies to the blogger quoted above, who I am sure is a very nice, fun person and all, and in her defense she voted early, but still...)

Michael Silence says it is:

KnoxViews has linked to and commented on extensively the saga of politicians behaving badly in Knox County. I sense, that has had very little if any impact on local politicos.

Do you agree? Can anyone think of an example where a discussion on a local blog, here or anywhere else, has made any difference or changed any behavior or affected any outcome?

Also, I wonder how many local government officials and employees read this blog? We know that a couple do, because they post here from time to time. I wonder how many others lurk? And what if any benefit is it to them, or to the community at large?

Rich has announced the next Blogfest! And hopes that everyone will show up as does Cathy Cathy Cathy.

Read more...

What the hell is this all about?

The liberal mantra: Whine, whine, whine

You've lost me when you're trying to make a point and it is clear you are about to wet your pants.

Come on, libs, I'm sure you have some good points to make, but getting all runny-nose defensive sort of steps on the message. Or should I saw pees on the message?

Now, go the corner, wipe your tears away and think about what I've said.

Say what? Guess he's trolling for links by being all edgy and what not. Guess it worked. He got one.

Brittney at Nashville is Talking has resigned. I haven't been following the latest controversy, but it appears she got hammered pretty hard for something she linked to and it pushed her over the edge.

This is a real shame. Her NiT blog is a huge force in the Tennessee blogosphere, and the NiT aggregator helped promote a lot of Nashville and state blogs including this one. She has done a fabulous job for WKRN and for Tennessee bloggers.

One of the best and worst things about the interwebs is the "wild west" atmosphere. It makes for a wide latitude in expressing viewpoints, but too many idiots have to abuse it and ruin it for everybody.

Everyone, me included, ought to remember from time to time that there are actual people on the other end of all the online hate and vitriol. I wish people could just tone it down a little and say what they mean in a forceful yet mature way without all the venom and crude attacks. It would be a lot more effective, and might even get someone who otherwise wouldn't to pay more attention to what we're saying instead of how we say it.

Hey, did you know that Bob Corker supports the presidential candidacy of Fred Thompson?

(Just doing my part to swing votes.)