My Blogosphere Whines For 2009

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MY BLOGOSPHERE WHINES FOR 2009….Today is New Year’s Eve, so here are my top ten whiny, blog-related pet peeves. They are in no particular order:

  1. Blogs without comment sections. Or, blogs with comment sections that require you to go through some kind of painful registration process just to leave a one-sentence note.
  2. Bloggers who don’t put their email addresses somewhere on the blog. I don’t mind looking around for it a bit (keeps the mind sharp, you know), but put it somewhere, OK?
  3. Blogs that provide only partial RSS feeds. See also point #5, which actually bugs me a lot more.
  4. Bloggers who are too damn lazy to check their links after they post something. Come on, people.
  5. “Teaser” blogs that put only the first paragraph or two on the main page and force you to click “continue” if you want to read the whole thing. This is both annoying and pointless. It only takes a second or two to scroll past a blog post you don’t want to read, after all. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Felix Salmon.)
  6. People who say “blog” when they really mean “blog post.”
  7. Blogs with lousy (or nonexistent) search capability. Mine, for example.
  8. Top ten lists that are plainly larded with filler because the listmaker couldn’t actually think of ten things to write about.
  9. Bloggers who can’t count.

I fully expect these problems to be completely resolved starting tomorrow — or, at the very least, on January 20th. If they aren’t, a blue ribbon commission will be appointed to deal with them. You have been warned.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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