City Room

I have to admit that I don't read the New York Times either in print or online at any time other than when a news story on which I'm posting comes from something at the NYT online and I've read about it somewhere else. But, once in a while, I do look at the statistics for this website (YWA) just to see what traffic is like and what stories people are currently searching. So that's how I learned there is a NYT blog called City Room, and that blogger Roja Heydarpour must take random strolls very far and wide through the blogosphere. How else to explain a You Will Anyway post showing up in the New York Times web pages?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update 10/17/07: It's happened again. This time, Slate has quoted and linked to a YWA post. They must be getting feeds from some service and quoting the first that get blogged. Because I'm pretty darned sure these guys aren't regular YWA readers.

Blogger Fame

Maru the Crankpot, at WTF Is It Now? had a post referenced on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! show today in the first segment. Now there's a recommendation.

Death Threats in the Blogdom

I don't read Kos, but I know his blog is very, very popular in the leftist blogosphere. Apparently he has weighed in on the issue of whether there should be some sort of blog civility rules and the claim of Kathy Sierra that she has received death threats.

And apparently, he's not buying it. (My sense from what I have read in the past at Kos, and what I know of it second-hand, is that he probably wouldn't be so dismissive of a popular leftist female blogger who claimed to get death threats, but I'm just speculating.)

So, while I shouldn't be commenting on Kos without reading Kos, I did come across something in another blog that I'd like to post here, for anyone who is following the issue over at Kos' place.

I don’t know why Markos has such trouble thinking that people might get actual death threats. The threats came at green activists before the advent of blogging, and that nature of the net makes such threats all the easier. Kos says that “crying bloggers” don’t produce the actual threats to his satisfaction, raising two questions:

1) How do you “produce” a phone call?
2) Did Kos suddenly join law enforcement, granting him the right to access to possible criminal evidence prior to a trial?

Here’s my take. Activists often get death threats when people who support the status quo find those activists effective. Kos does not believe death threats exist, never having seen one. Drawing of the obvious conclusions has been left as an exercise for the reader.

  Creek Running North post

While I am not at all in favor of regulating or censoring blogs, I don't see any reason why death threats or harassment to bloggers should be taken any less seriously than those to Mr. Bubblepants in the White House. After all, bloggers are actually doing their jobs.