NC Media Watch

Some people suffer from an inferiority complex, including bloggers.

Russ Steele
 
According to Wikipedia an inferiority complex, in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis, is a feeling that one is inferior to others in some way. Such feelings can arise from an imagined or actual inferiority in the afflicted person. It is often subconscious, and is thought to drive afflicted individuals to overcompensate, resulting either in spectacular achievement or extreme schizotypal behavior, or both.  This is an example of a local lefty blogger feeling inferior here and here, even though his numbers are stable over the last year. How sad!

To syndicate or not to syndicate, that was my question

Russ Steele

Following this blog being mentioned in a New York Times article on blogging here, a number of very nice things happened. Traffic went up, some new voices joined the comment section, and I received an offer to syndicate this blog from Newstex.com.  After downloading the free eBook on blog syndication,  and thinking about the two year contract commitment, and discussing my options with a Newstxt.com representative, I have decided that syndication was not for me, even thought it was an opportunity to have my thoughts to distributed by Nexis/Lexis, and Thomson Reuters, or to appear in GAWKER or engaget or many other well know publications. 

After due consideration, I think that a syndication commitment could change the way I think about blogging, and it might take the fun out of it.  If blogging ceases to be fun, I will stop blogging and take up some other fun hobby like shark fishing in Lake Spaulding.

Watts Up With That - Best Science blog in 2011

Russ Steele

My friend Anthony Watts’ blog Watts Up With That was voted the best Science Blog in the 2011 Bloggies.



Congratulations to Anthony and his cadre of guest posters and his team of moderators who keep the discussion on track and civil. Well done to all! It has been a real previlage to be an occasional guest poster over the last year.

Next phase of Citizen Journalism - Adopt-a-political leader

Russ Steele

When states need some one to clean up the highways, they asked organizations to adopt a segment of a highway and keep the trash picked up. Citizens responded, from a single person, to a family, a church, a civic organization all have adopted highway segments and assumed responsibility for keeping it clean.

Now the Tea Party is asking citizens to adopt a Congressman. ABC News has the story:

After playing such a pivotal role in the November elections, Tea Party activists vowed they would keep a close eye on Congress. They weren't kidding.

The Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest organizing groups of the movement, want to assign personal bloggers to track every member of Congress, not just the ones they supported.

The group will launch a recruitment drive this week coinciding with a weekend policy summit being held in Phoenix for state and local coordinators. Shelby Blakely, a stay-at-home mom from eastern Washington state who is organizing the project, said she has little doubt they will be able to round up enough people to tackle a job that she describes as "citizen journalism meets adopt-a-congressman."

"One of the strengths that the Tea Party has is we have a massive army," Blakely said. "We have millions of manpower hours and thousands of people willing to do heavy lifting."

Read the rest of the story here. According the article the Tea Party Patriots are reworking their website to accommodate for the hundreds of blogs and are developing training for what they hope is a flood of first-time bloggers.  I am volunteering to be a local trainer for all those first timers who want to get involved. Let me know if your are interested.

I am hoping that idea also catches  on in California and we have bloggers tracking state legislators, mayors and city council member.  I am thinking of setting up a local blog to test some of these concepts, by tracking the Board of Supervisors and City Councils.  If you agree, please comment and I will organize a meeting.

Here is some salve for a bad chap

Russ Steele

Update (02-28-11, 10:00) Comment are closed, the discussion has veered into repetitious personal attacks.

Jeff Pelline, our local middle of the road, left leaning blogger writes that he is chapped by retired military personnel receiving benefits. He writes:

One thing that really chaps me about guys like Russ Steele is that they have benefited from government “handouts,” if you will, their whole lives: a government-paid college education (by Russ’ own admission), a VA loan for a house I suspect, a pension from the Air Force I presume, a government stimulus check to retirees from Obama, and really good health care for the family.

Let put all this chapping in perspective.  In 1960, with two years of college under my belt, I joined the Air Force and as was commissioned a 2nd Lt upon graduation from Navigation school.  I signed a contract to service for four years and defend the United States, and if necessary at the cost of my life.  As the end of the four years I was commissioned a Regular Office with a 20 year commitment. I signed a contract to support and defend this nation, and if necessary at the cost of my life. 

According to that contract for 20 years of service at reduce salary, I would be guaranteed a retirement at 50% of by base pay, low cost medical care for me and my family and other VA benefits as authorized by congress. About six years into my 20 year tour, President Johnson need more money for his social programs and decided that we should also pay Social Security taxes, which reduced our take home play even more. During my first 10 years, I completed my college degree while attending Air Command and Staff College. I went to school 12 hours a day, five days a week, for 9 months, studying on weekends. 

I was married in 1963 and Ellen and I raised four daughter while I was in the Air Force. We moved 14 times in 20 year, losing money on every move. Once they were in school, all those moves took a toll on our children.  We put all four through college on my TRW Salary, our savings, and a family endowment. 

Following my 20 years in the Air Force I joined TRW and started a 401K saving account and used the TRW medical plan.  I did not start using government medical services until four years after I retried from TRW in 2000.  Yes, the VA guaranteed our home loan, but we made every payment.  Was that a "handout"? It could have had an FHA guaranteed loan.

I tell you what chaps me, is that people like Jeff Pelline, who to my knowledge have never served in the military, claim that retired military  are getting government "handouts."  I signed a contract with the government for 20 years of service. I full filled my side of the contract with distinction, now I want the government to fill their side of the contract, that is not a handout. My benefits are payments on a commitment the government made in 1964.

Since we move back to Nevada County, Ellen and I have worked to make this a better place to live. She served on the Grand Jury for 20 month. Being a retired military officer, with a 401K plan, I have the resources and time to invest in our community.  I served on the Transportation Commission twice.  When the ERC hired Larry Burkardt, I was the first ERC Volunteer, and I have volunteered to support all the ERC Presidents since the ERC was established. I served in the Chamber Board for four years, I helped get the Nevada County County Leadership Institute started. I helped bring Internet to the Library and Nevada County Schools.  I am currently on the SESF Board and support theTechTest merit scholarship program for graduating high school students seeking careers in engineering and science. 

Exit Question:  What volunteer time has Jeff Pelline contributing to our community?

Welcome New York Times Readers

Russ Steele

If you have dropped by after reading Verne Kopytoff article on Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter in the NY Times Internet Section, please look around. If you have any questions about why I blog, local or regional issues I blog about, or blogging in general, please post a comment. Again, welcome to NC Media Watch!

Dear Brad, can you be more specific?

This was posted by Brad Glasse on Jeff Pelline’s blog:

I’ve got to love Russ….

He makes constant statements in the Union that just show how really un-informed he is about anything technical…..

He’s the “atypical & unknowing” right-winged guy making statements about subjects that if he spent 5 minutes researching, he would be much more aware of how dopey these statement really are….
It’s such a disappointment to have people like this trying to speak for the educated people in this county!

Maybe the highly intelligent and all knowing Mr. Glasse can be little more specific, just what were the technical issues that I do not understand?  Perhaps he can provide some more insight so I can understand my “dopey” statements and refrain from making similar mistakes.

Watts Up With That a finalist for "bloggies" awards.

Russ Steele

Anthony Watts' blog Watts Up With That has been nominated as the best science blog.  I highly recommend that readers visit his blog and follow the instructions for voting HERE. 

There is usually two sides to blogging numbers, here is one example

Russ Steele

BACKGROUND
At the end of every month most bloggers like to check their traffic stats to see how they are doing. Are the blogging audiences growing or declining?  One our local bloggers likes to crow at the end of the month that he is the top dog in town. He published this graphic on his blog today.  I have cropped the original to just show his traffic and mine, because I will only be providing some perspective on those two cases.



ANALYSIS
Below is a similar Quantcast graphic, only instead of page views I have chosen the number of people visiting the sites for the comparison.  While page views are an interesting statistic, it is possible for a individual blogger to drive up his pages views by logging in and keep reading the pages, over and over again thus driving up his page view count. [I am not saying this is the case here, only that it is possible.] On the other hand it is harder to fake the number of people visiting a specific blog.


As you can see more people are visited this blog than the crowing blogger's site. It all depends on the chosen metric.

Checking the stats on Alexia another site that keeps track of traffic, we find these interesting tidbits. In this analysis the close to one (1) as in “number one”  is the best possible score.  The farther from (1) you are the ranking decreases. For the site to be compared graphically the rank must be <100,000.  As you can see our bragging blogger did not make the cut.

• There are 1,294,545 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Jeffpelline.wordpress.com. We estimate that 59% of this site's visitors are in the US, where it has attained a traffic rank of 362,252. It is relatively popular among users in the city of Sacramento (where it is ranked #6,632). Visitors to Jeffpelline.wordpress.com spend about two minutes per visit to the site and two minutes per pageview. Approximately 44% of visits to the site are referred by search engines.

Where as this blog has a US Rank of 88,323 which is under the <100,000 bench mark.   

• Ncwatch.typepad.com has a three-month global Alexa traffic rank of 332,940. Visitors to it view 1.7 unique pages each day on average. The site is relatively popular among users in the city of Sacramento (where it is ranked #4,589). Visitors to the site spend approximately four minutes per visit to the site and two minutes per pageview.

Both of the blogs are part of the Sac Bee Connect program, which generates Sacramento Traffic. So far, this site ranked higher in attracting more Sac Bee Readers than the bragging blogger.  However, these are just estimates and can change rather rapidly. 

I write about subjects that are of interest to me, and I hope my readers. If I just wanted to drive up my traffic numbers for the sake of having high numbers,  I would be posting more Tea Party YouTube videos with patriotic music.  When I posted one such YouTube videos in November, the daily visitors peaked 15,000 a day, just prior to the 2010 election.

Now you know more about the numbers game. It all depends on what numbers are most important. Here are some fun tools your can play with to see how your favorite site's traffic is holding up:

Alexa: http://www.alexa.com

Quantcast: http://www.quantcast.com/

Compete: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/

Let me be clear, let me be real clear

Russ Steele

Jeff Pelline, our local left leaning  middle of roader blogger is whining about the lack of moderation standards on this blog. Let me be real clear:

1) If a commentors posts racist, homophobic crap it goes in the bit bucket with out explanation. Why should I waste my time explaining why he or she is ignorant, or stupid with the possibility both. 

2) Profanity will be treated the same as one above, how every I get to decide.

3) If the liberal whining become too unbearable I will close the comments so we can all get a good night sleep.

4)  If the comment is only a naked URL with out any context, it will be sent to the bit bucket, and I will take the time to explain why it was removed.

5)  Trolls are the scum of the Internet. The purpose of his/her existence is to challenge the blog owner and play the role of /spoilsport/critic/villain/super-villain by constantly attempting to discredit, rubbish and criticize all of the blogger's attempts to explain his or her position. To be a troll, you need not have any argument or merit, just a string of abuses targeted towards your object of obsession does the trick, and gets you noticed. All a troll wants is attention.  Trolls will be treats as in one above, unless they are demonstrating their ignorance so profoundly that I may keep them around for the humor value.

6)  I will attempt to address any reasonable argument, but I will not waste my time arguing with idiots. I will let the idiots speak for themselves, and keep the post for all to see.  They illustrate what they are better than anyone can, so why should I wasting time trying to explain why they are idiots.

7) If the required e-mail is fake, number one above will apply.

There you go Jeff, I hope this helps.