Sunday, July 16, 2006

Bloggers in the Park News!

At the outset of yesterday's BloggerCon Episode IV, a reporter and photographer from the Buffalo News showed up to do some coverage of the event, and the resulting article can be read here. Yes, I am quoted in the article, albeit extremely briefly (fine by me!) and, in the Dead Tree Edition, in the continuation of the article on the inner pages of the City and Region section, so I doubt I'll see any kind of traffic jump from my mention therein. No big deal, though. I'm fine with being a smaller fish in the blog pool these days.

After they left, there was some speculation that the resulting piece would be yet another "Hey, there are these things called 'blogs' and here's what they are and stuff" pieces that typically constitutes the News's awareness of the existence of Blogistan, but I'm glad to see that this wasn't the case: the thrust of the piece isn't the existence of blogs, but the existence of the Buffalo blogging community. The Buffalo Prefecture of Blogistan is a real thing, folks! It was a good thrust for this article; any coverage of Blogistan that undermines the stereotype of bloggers as pasty-skinned folks who sit around and bang away on keyboards, bereft of real human contact outside of the pizza delivery guy, can only be a good thing.

(And yes, while the article itself is well done -- kudos to Stephen Watson! -- I have to once again throw some rocks at the News's Web operation. Assuming that this isn't some kind of problem Firefox is having with rendering the News's website, as of this writing the online version of the article presents the text as one giant and unbroken paragraph. It's not that way in the Dead Tree Edition of the paper, of course -- but here's a paper that doesn't care enough about its Web operation to present an article in the way that the reporter wrote it. Come on, folks at the News! Whatever company you're paying to slap your Website together is doing a job that makes you guys look like idiots. Ditch them and get some real Web developers whose knowledge of the Web didn't stop growing in March of 1998.)

2 comments:

All Things Jennifer said...

I thought I was the only one! The same thing happened to me when I ct and pasted the article into my blog for future reference, since you only ge online access for what 7 days? And I have IE on this computer. Reminder to self: UPLOAD FIREFOX! (Boyfriend's computer you see...)

Derek J. Punaro said...

Psst... the company that does the News's website is the Aurora Consulting Group. I know, because I interviewed there a couple years ago. Their own website isn't much to look at either.

Good meeting you! I also finally added your site to my blogroll. :)