Bob McAlister’s blog has gone dark, and I don’t feel so good myself

We’ve arrived at the time of the week when I peruse South Carolina blogs looking for something, anything, that is fresh, S.C.-flavored and printable for the blog rail we run down the right-hand side of the edit page on Mondays.

And the pickings are slim. In fact, I discovered to my horror that one of the most reliable bloggers out there — our own Bob McAlister, who would never have gotten into the game if not for us — is hanging up his guns.

As he puts it in his blog equivalent of a suicide note:

I’m outta here

September 24th, 2007

This blog is going dark (some would say it’s been in the dark since I started).

The reason: Too much to do, too little time to do it. My business,
thankfully, continues to thrive. Since I’m paying to send four
grandchildren to a private Christian school, I figure I’d be smart to
concentrate solely on it. I just don’t have the time or, more
accurately, will not take what limited time I have to do readers
justice.

When I succumbed to Cindi Scoppe’s proposal to start this blog more
than two years ago, I wrote that I hoped blogging did not take the
place of real news. So far it hasn’t, but blogging is becoming an
increasingly important part of the public information business. So much
so that bloggers are courted by presidential candidates almost as much
a real reporters. All of the mainstream media are getting into blogging
nowadays. I assume it’s their effort to connect with younger people who
don’t watch TV news or read newspapers.

But I still maintain bloggers are not journalists, at least not at
this point in the evolution of the industry. They should not have the
same rights as journalists (such as protecting confidential sources
from court proceedings). But many of them are breaking news and
offering insights that you don’t always get in the mainstream media.
The discipline no doubt is maturing and that’s good for news consumers.

Anyway, so much for my feeble contribution. I appreciate the way
Cindi, Brad and Kelly (The State’s blogging expert) have supported and
encouraged the other community bloggers and me. The editorial staff
does not get the credit it deserves for busting its collective butt 7
days a week to turn out a news product. But I never found them too busy
to answer some pretty dumb questions from yours truly. They’re great
people (even though I want to strangle them at times for not seeing the
world just as I see it).

As Dan “Yellow Dog Democrat” Rather would say, “Courage.”  Whatever the heck that meant.

But you know what? He’s far from the only one whose lights are no longer on. The others just haven’t had the decency to alert us to the fact.

I’ll do a follow-up post on that. Right now, I’ve got to get back to the weekly chore, which has just become harder.

9 thoughts on “Bob McAlister’s blog has gone dark, and I don’t feel so good myself”

  2. bill

    Most of Bob’s posts were followed by “No Comments”.His blog was doing so poorly,he allowed MR to comment.
    I think your blog peaked with your infamous Edward’s piece.You wisely stopped approving or deleting comments while basking in your 15 minutes.Now,the thrill is gone.
    “I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility,and tiresome in their courtesy.”
    Michel de Montaigne

  3. Brad Warthen

    That sounds like a Frenchman, all right.
    Actually, you’re mistaken about Edwards, on a couple of counts. I didn’t open the floodgates to “bask;” I simply didn’t have time to read it all, and didn’t want to hold up the good-faith messages while I hunted for bad ones.
    I don’t know what I’d do if I were flooded like that all the time; I certainly don’t have time to read that many comments. I like the current situation, with only a few a day.
    As I’ve explained in the past, comments and readership don’t correlate that closely. For instance, the week that the Ravenel indictment broke was much bigger than the Edwards week (23,950 page views, as opposed to 16,878), but didn’t generate as many comments.
    I like to have a nice, steady flow of comments that are easy to keep up with, and lots of readership. I prefer it to the opposite.
    Yesterday was a good day, with 1,915 page views (carried out to a week, that would be over 13,000, which is quite respectable in my book), and a modest flow of messages.
    The readership and comments the week of Edwards were too much to be valuable — and so much of it was people directed here by Drudge who really have no interest in our conversations here; they just want to throw out a few partisan battle cries (in this case, either for or against Edwards), and move on. Such input as that add nothing.
    I like days like yesterday. I posted frequently, and readers responded by taking interest, but we didn’t have a shouting mob gather. Days like yesterday are like the kind of baseball I prefer — plenty of base hits and good base-running. I much prefer that to home runs. A home run is essentially a denial of the game’s essence — a guy knocks the ball out of play, so there is no longer a contest. The defenders are unable to do anything, and there’s no interaction of skill against skill. The guy runs around the bases, and all the defenders can do is stare at him, because the ball is gone.
    I much prefer the interaction of offense and defense. More like a conversation.

  4. zzazzeefrazzee

    Hey Brad,
    You could always write another bit about the stupid irony inherent in confederate flag-flying. Better yet, you could revisit the local neo-Nazi chapter. Those sick bastards have been all over the State discussion boards, trying their best to exploit the recent events in Jena…

  5. Zenegra

    During dinner, the date was going really well, and then I decided I should take some of my Generic Zenegra, and an hour later I was having some of the most amazing sex ever.

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