Bay Blogger Thursday

SFist: So, we know you work for, like, a legitimate news publication. In what capacity are you employed?
George The title's "copy editor/paginator." I've just been putting "copy editor" on our 1040s.
George I do what I'm asked. It's rarely the same shift more than three straight days.
George Rim, slot, paginate, layout. I'm never bored.
George Satisfies my illusions of indispensability.
George What did Heinlein say about generalists versus specialists?
George http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SpecializationIsForInsects
SFist: So we see you up late -- when all is quiet in iChat, we can count on you pulling the midnight shift. What's the news cycle like at a daily?
George Reporters show up in the morning and stay through the evening, writing stories and meeting sources and keeping their editors apprised of what they'll file and how many inches it'll run.
George Their editors meet and make decisions about where to play the stories in the paper.
George Then those guys go home about a few hours after the copy editors and page designers have come in.
George There'll be local copy and photographs, maybe graphics.
George There are also the wires to keep watch of.
George One never knows when something's going to explode somewhere -- only that it will explode.
George The copy editors and page designers usually stick until about midnight, but sometimes later.
George You want the best image of Pope John Paul II's funeral? It can take until 1:30 a.m. or later.
SFist: When does the paper go to press, and how long does it take after that to hit a doorstep? Is there any flexibility in that regard?
George http://editorchrislopez.blogspot.com/2005/04/two-front-pages.html
George Our executive editor's been blogging; there's his take on getting that image.
George Once we're done for the evening, everything goes to pre-press. They go over it with an even finer-toothed comb than ours. Then it's off to our printing presses and onto the trucks.
George I've seen a distributor drop a bundle off at a Walnut Creek gas station by 2:30 or 3 a.m.
George Doorstep delivery? It can vary.
George Probably not much more than a couple of hours after that.
George The folks I work with try their best to make deadlines.
George Tell the story with every tool at your disposal, up to the moment and with as much context as can be offered.
SFist: How does the cycle compare to blogging? Is there a blogorhythm?
George The cycle's different from one-(wo)man, one-browser blogging.
SFist: So we'll bring it back to you -- as a blogger, what's your schedule?
SFist: What blogs to wake up to, how much do you surf during the day, what do you pass on to reporters and what do you pass on to other bloggers?
George Well, my schedule means I get home after midnight.
George I don't sleep until much later.
George That's a golden time to hit blogdex.net, comb Bloglines, look through the Google news alerts I've set up,
George and so on.
George I surf as much as I can. At home, it's about keeping up with the people I care about, seeing what they're up to.
George But also looking for long things that can add context and help me make sense of the wire stories I'm likely to see in an evening.
George If I see something online at work, I'll go over and tell the wire editor.
George I remember doing that the other day with Saul Bellow's death.
George It's nothing the editor wouldn't have seen maybe a couple of minutes later once he'd returned to his desk,
George but the sooner he knows, the sooner he can suggest maybe a teaser out front,
George and get a bead on which wire story to use, or how to localize it.
SFist: Yeah, SFist is always on the lookout for the 'local angle.' It's not always easy!
SFist: So there's a lot of tension in the blogosphere over whether or not bloggers count as journalists. Is there a line? Should there be? And where would you draw it?
George Yes, there's a line.
George Bloggers can behave like journalists.
George There should be a line, though.
George Because journalists and bloggers, generally speaking, have different missions.
George Both have a good deal to learn from each other. I think newspapers have more catching up to do.
SFist: Really?
SFist: What about on questions of ethics?
George Well, newspapers are having to deal with this shifting media environment.
SFist: We can publish very quickly, and try to disclose our biases, but speed can kill.
George Weblogs were sort of born into that environment.
SFist: Matthew Hirsch of the Bay Guardian gave Michael Bassick a good reaming in a report last week about the Electioneering reform bill.
SFist: But he had the comfort of a lead time.
SFist: http://www.sfbg.com/39/28/news_bloggers.html
George That was annoying.
George That's exactly the sort of story where you need to pause and reflect before posting.
George Bassik also failed to disclose that a prime target of the ordinance, the California Urban Issues Project, is an MSHC client.
George Oy.
SFist: Yeah -- not so 'ethical.'
George Without including any context about San Francisco elections, Bassik stirred his audience to action over the general fear that Maxwell could be waging an assault on the First Amendment. "Let's all send quick e-mails – even just a sentence or two – to Supervisor Maxwell," he wrote.
George "Without including any context."
SFist: Shall we have another kick at Jayson Blair?
SFist: Or Armstrong Williams?
SFist: And yes, that was a shameless way to bring up our next topic.
George I hope investigators continue to press the government on Williams.
SFist: As we've covered that you're a intimately concerned with "Traditional" media as well as "New" media (or whatever it is it's being called this week). You also happen to be African-American, and have spoken on your role in the blogosphere as such on numerous occassions -- at least one that SFist witnessed.
George http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000883958
George I haven't thought about Jayson Blair in a minute or two.
SFist: At least we didn't bring up Malcom Gladwell.
SFist: Whoops.
George Heh.
George Well, where do I start?
SFist: We haven't really asked the question yet.
SFist: Our bad.
SFist: So we've been thinking about the tension between anonymity and publicity.
George OK.
SFist: For instance, to get back to politics and news, there are a lot of political forums where people use handles.
SFist: You could choose, for instance, to be a blond white woman.
SFist: In fact, somebody did just that recently, and said his blog got a lot more traffic!
George Was that Hot Abercrombie Chick?
SFist: http://libertariangirl.typepad.com/
George Oh, yeah.
SFist: Recently outed himself as "LibertarianGuy."
SFist: So being a "black" blogger on your part could be considered a conscious decision.
George Oh, definitely. I've gotta be me, like the song says.
SFist: You didn't have to be if you didn't want to, at least publicly.
George Oliver Willis says he doesn't like to blog about being black.
SFist: Though obviously you still would be working with your personal experience as an African-American.
George Out of a sense, in part, of not wanting to have to feel obligated.
SFist: Of course.
George I mean, he's focused on politics, on power structures, on pop culture, on his dog CK.
George Being black is something that he can choose not to address online if he doesn't want.
George And that's fine.
George But I link to him in Negrophile's blogroll.
George If he wanted off, I'd take him off. But I like having him there, for a couple of reasons.
George There's lots of diversities.
George A lot of room between, say, African bloggers and a self-described "mulatto boy" blogger.
George Between Juliette Ochieng and LaShawn Barber and, say, Tony Pierce and Jesse Taylor of Pandagon.
George Heck, there's lots of daylight between Conservative Brotherhood members.
George But the diversity that I'm thinking of with Oliver and me is
George the freedom to be as black as you want online.
George It's something everyone has to be concerned with, the freedom to be as "x" as you want, and how much you want to put into it.
SFist: SFist wants to be pretty and have friends, by the way. And free beer.
SFist: But we digress...
George Oh, Conservative Brotherhood. http://www.conservativebrotherhood.org/
SFist: Right, you brought them up at the panel in Austin if I'm not mistaken.
SFist: We can imagine a lot of "OMG, Black Republicans" from sheltered political kids on the web.
George Yes. And after the OMG,
George there's the "why do you have to be 'black' at all?"
SFist: So would you say that you're trying to highlight a particularly interesting intersection between meatspace reality and blog reality?
George I keep returning to it, with varying degrees of intensity and perplexity.
George I've got no lock on it. I don't own it. I'm not sure if it's resolvable, or just a trick of the light.
SFist: Your blog name being rather reflexive, after all.
George Which blog name?
SFist: Well, both, really.
SFist: Though one is more personal, and the other more of a state of mind.
SFist: As "Negrophile" has certainly been used to describe a lot of white folks.
George True.
George They're OK names.
George Last month at SXSW, I said:
George About three years after I started ALLABOUTGEORGE, I met, uh, Jason and another friend of ours, Aaron Hawkins of Uppity-Negro.com, and I saw his name and Jason’s name and I, I got a little jealous. I, um, wanted to be a “negro” too. So “negrophile” is in the dictionary. It’s nice and short, ten letters, and the only people who use it are these really deluded white supremacist types on the Internet and they use it as an adjective or signifier for … all the things they really need in their life.
SFist: And SFist laughed.
SFist: Hard.
SFist: But of course it's true.
George Example of the "why do you have to be black at all?": http://www.mdcbowen.org/cobb/archives/003762.html
SFist: The Republican Party certainly is a big tent.
SFist: Jackie Robinson and George Wallace.
George Log Cabin types and Focus on the Family types.
George Not my bag, though.
SFist: Well, the "Lincoln was Gay" meme certainly runs strong in the blogosphere.
SFist: If we were a Log Cabin Republican, then we'd be proud.
SFist: Rick Santorum, not so much.
George If those poll results floating around are to be believed, Santorum may not be a factor.
George Not past '06.
SFist: We'd like to think our hometown alt-weekly editor Dan Savage had something to do with that.
George With its "spread."
George Among a certain set, I'm sure.
George But I think folks probably feel the way they feel about Santorum because of who he is. They come by it on his merit.
George We'll see if they continue to see it that way.
SFist: Well, one of the reasons we love your work is because it highlights the diversity amongst bloggers who happen to be black, as well as the blogosphere in general, as some folks have a tendency to think African-Americans as a homogenous group.
George [Oh, as an addendum to that learning thing. http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=81395]
SFist: Do you worry about folks thinking "well, I saw it on Negrophile, that's what black people must be thinking?"
George I'm really confident that that's the last thing people do.
George At least, regular readers and not tourists.
SFist: ["Hey, Craig, buy some ads on SFist!"]
SFist: Again, we digress.
George I sure didn't set up Negrophile as the One True Word of Black Folks.
George If I had, I wouldn't try to link to so many other folks.
George Nobody's in this to be alone or stay alone.
SFist: So have you ever had an incident with an online racist?
George Nobody persistent.
SFist: Anyone with good grammar?
George Latest one:
George http://www.negrophile.com/phile/articles/that_is_a_stereotype_and_a_half.html
SFist: Wow.
SFist: What's funny is that we actually do know white people who speak in African-American vernacular naturally as their primary language set.
SFist: And a lot more who just pretend to.
George It's not our fault if he doesn't circulate beyond downtown D.C.
George Do I really want to beat him over the head with Appalachian speech patterns that go all the way to Elizabethan England?
SFist: It would take some time.
George Or a copy of Leon Wynter's "American Skin" book?
SFist: Yeah, you pick your battles.
George Everytime you log on, you have to.
SFist: Okay, final question.
SFist: We never let a fish get away without asking them to tell us an "Only in San Francisco" story, thought we'll give you an East Bay break if you prefer.
SFist: "Really, in Richmond," "That's Why They Call it Berzerkely," or "Oh, Oakland." are all acceptable.
George It's all little things.
George I never got to live in the City. One of the first things I did, a week or two after getting off the Greyhound from D.C., was help a buddy move out of the Haight in '95 'cause his landlord was jacking up his rent.
George So few things raise my eyebrows about S.F. or Oakland or Berkeley or Richmond now.
George The things that do sure can't be said on the record.
George I think about what it means to be from the Bay Area and go elsewhere nowadays.
George Like in Austin. Having to tell people over and over where I was from.
George 'Course, we were swimming in S.F.ers there.
SFist: Well, thanks so much for your time!
George It's been a pleasure.