UPDATE: "Looks like they’re backing away like Murtha from the war," says Jeff Jarvis (who, like Steven Taylor, links to these posts from David Corn and Glenn Reynolds).
ANOTHER UPDATE: Dennis the Peasant tells his version of the history of the founding of OSM, in a post that could have been titled "The Revenge of Jethro Bodine." MORE: Dennis's previous post is on point too, and unlike the later one has a comments section.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Atrios has unleashed the commenters on Roger. I can almost empathize. It's actually a good opportunity to compare the behavior of lefty and righty commenters. The lefties, in this sample, are all over the place, in "open thread" mode, despite the assigned topic.
Elsewhere in the the left blogo-hemisphere, Kos inflicts a different kind of pain. Noting, as I have, that frequently nearly all of the headlines displayed at OSM are from Xinhua News Agency -- "the official propaganda mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party" -- Kos quips: "So, um, did OSM's $3.5 million in venture funds come from the Chinese government?" When the first commenter doesn't get the joke of his title ("OSM is Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece"), Kos explains that he's joking and adds, cogently:
[This is t]he kind of kink they should've worked out before their all-too-public launch.Yes. I really cannot fathom the thinking behind opening big with what little they had. Was it hubris? Sheer recklessness?
That's why I'm a big fan of soft-launches. Quietly launch, work out the kinks with the help of early adopters, and then make your big splash announcement.
MORE: Funniest Kos comment: "They stole Cialis's logo." I knew that spit curl looked familiar. Spit curl. It's this. I'm not bodily-fluids blogging again. My bodily fluids post of the day was here. And what a nutty photo on Cialis's page [when I visited]. The man's hand is in the nose-thumbing position, and the couple seems to have a relationship that is the furthest thing from sexual. But I guess that's their pitch: "If a playful moment turns into the right moment, you can be ready." Nice marketing, really, encouraging guys to take the drug "just in case." Why would OSM invoke Cialis imagery? They've got a website up, "just in case," somewhere down along the line, they have something to write.
YET MORE: Dan at Riehl World View has some serious questions for Roger L. Simon:
From what I've read of Kelly [AKA Dennis the Peasant], he has attacked OSM, ... [b]ut it appears you are dodging legitimate ethics questions by suggesting it's only personal.... You asked this Dennis to share his ideas and after going quite a ways down the road with him and hitting on some new, perhaps even better ones, you simply dropped him? Is that true? Come on, Roger - you're better than this. At least I hope you are.AND EVEN MORE: Jeff Jarvis amused me with this:
It's too shrewd by half for you to now say no contracts were signed. This isn't fiction writing you're into now, Roger. OSM is supposed to be about reporting credible information. If the CEO of OSM is going to kick the thing off by saying, hey, don't mind my hand shakes, they don't amount to anything, it's an ominous start.
In the end, no one cares about Kelly - if he is out, he's out. But you have started and are by design now the purported leader of a serious new venture. Might I suggest you start acting like one? Either get serious, or go back to playing around with a less than wealth enhancing blog like the rest of us.
Yet Open Source Media, the whatever-it-is, promises this — with more haughtiness than I’d ever heard from Dan Rather — on its prevaricating post about the name:How could the prominent bloggers who put OSM together have retained so little sense of the spirit of blogging?
The goal of our enterprise is to bring gravitas and legitimacy to the blogosphere.Oh, gag me with a mitre.
I don’t think that blogs need to have legitimacy laid upon them … and who died and made you the legitimizer?
ON REREADING: To that last question, why did great bloggers lose the spirit of blogging? Perhaps, it was that they wanted to expand beyond blogging and had to leave blogging behind to pursue their ambitions. Oddly, lots of people trusted them to become business managers because they were good bloggers, but the enterprise involved sloughing off the blogger's attitude. Indeed, there was never any reason to think that because a person is good at blogging he'd be good at business.
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Um, the Moses Wine series is pretty much empty stuff too. And most of Roger's posts are vacuous, illogical and poorly sourced. Roger's claim that the dems left him before he left the dems is of the same stuff.
Worse, his closed registration system of commenters and his frequent banning of people that disagee with him all lead to his echo chamber telling him he can do no wrong.
So big launch on not much of anything of value is Roger through and through.
I was thinking that it looked like Lucent's logo. Which itself looked like the coffee stain "Ring of Quality" from Dilbert.
I find this whole thing to be amusing (in a rather pathetic way). It's entertaining to see that THE BLOGOSPHERE (oh, and how I hate that self-congratulatory non-word) can cheerfully dish out rants and criticism all day long but goes into immediate meltdown once faced with the same.
One of the ladies in a writing group I'm part of brings boxes of medical office vender loot... pens, note pads, that sort of thing with product logos on them.
I even thought at the time... "This is probably something embarassing" and then forgot about it.
Those little Cialis post-it notes are really handy. :-)
"Simon has "lizardoids" too?"
Yes, and when you've been attacked by them you've been Simonized!
I thought you'd like this from the latest Apprentice recap:
Ultimately, Alla says, "You cannot change Clay. We've tried. He's Clay and he'll stay Clay." Which is the crux of the narcissism issue: if God himself told Clay to take it down a notch, he'd still say, "That's just your opinion." There's no hitting bottom with someone like that, because there's no bottom to hit.
I don't understand the idea that Professor Althouse is writing about this too much. Last I checked, she writes about what she finds interesting, not to entertain or coddle her readers.
(I moved this post down here so it would make sense, since jakemanjack moved his)
Got that, Ann? You're not involved, so ZIP IT!
Is this silly argument some strange version of the left's "chickenhawk" thing? If you aren't fighting the war, you can't talk about it!
And I'm glad to hear that the OSM people had a "fun time" in New York. Problem is, it wasn't just a party, it was supposed to be the launch of a revolutionary product and concept. So far, it has failed and also provided the critics of blogs with more ammunition that blogs and independent writing on the net are child's play that can't be taken seriously.
At this point, if I was one of the people who footed the bill for the OSM "great time" in New York, I would be plenty worried and plenty mad.
"You must have a really high opinion of the OSMers."
I used to...
It's typekey with one mod. If the Rog doesn't like your names, which has at times meant handles that aren't a real name, he will ban you just for that.
Names like quxxo for instance.
Basically he bans you when he feels like it, without telling everyone else that he has done so.
It's a complete echo chamber over there, and DTP was personally responsible for providing at least half the empty mental space required to produce that echo.
Tiggeril: Are you trying to say something about Roger?
Ann,
My pleasure.
And thanks for the link.
Steven
I wonder how the advisory board members are compensated and if actual or deferred compensation will influence their blogging. Were they given stock or options, for example? Do they receive a check for every meeting they attend? Anything they write about OSM is now highly suspect because of their personal involvement (and the lack of transparency).
I'm surprised that such a high-powered group of professionals allowed such a flawed product to go public using their names. The principals' failure to do their due diligence about the name distracts attention from the sorry fact that the editorial board members apparently failed to do their own due diligence. As a result, an obviously untested and inferior product was launched with great fanfare and the reputations of those involved and promoting it has suffered.
Jakemanjack: "Why are you so concerned and obsessed with something with which you are not involved? David Corn and Glenn Reyonlds are directly involved with OSM. I take what they have to say about it seriously."
I write about what I'm interested in, and I've been part of a conversation about OSM for a long time. And why do you think insiders to an operation are more credible? That's backwards!
"It looks to me like the bloggers had a great time in New York."
Ha, ha. I'm sure the last breakfast served on the Titanic was delicious.
Telling me to shut up, calling me obsessed, trying to discredit me... I recommend rereading the title of this post. Defend OSM, why not? You can't!
Palladian: "So far, it has failed and also provided the critics of blogs with more ammunition that blogs and independent writing on the net are child's play that can't be taken seriously."
Excellent point. They wanted to extract money from what blogging had built up, and they didn't mind hurting blogging in the process. When Roger L. Simon called me on the telephone to pressure me about Pajamas Media, his key point was that BlogAds was pathetically wedded to sentimental ideas about what blogging is and that they were going to transcend those limitations and get to the big money. When I defended BlogAds, he got very agitated and came right out and said that they had a big investor and he expected to make a profit, as if I needed to wise up about how business works. I tried to express how strongly I felt about the values that had grow up within the culture of blogging, and he said "Nice to talk to you" and hung up on me.
Oh, have I told that story before? Well, it made a big impression on me, and it just keeps being relevant to the subject. Maybe you can see what my obsession really is: the sheer love of blogging.
Not about Mr. Simon in particular, but this whole venture.
Jakemanjack: "I've noticed that not a single positive comment has been made here in regard to OSM."
I'm going to have to ask you again to reread the title of this post. Obviously, I think the defense of OSM is not occurring because there's no material. If you want to hear a positive comment, you're free to make one -- as is everyone else who's put out about the negative things I've said.
Well?
Silence!
The closest anyone can get is to say various insiders are important bloggers and maybe something good will happen later. In other words: you have nothing!
Wait, Jake do you actually believe that insiders are more qualified to evaluate their operation? I guess that means that bloggers should've shut up and stopped bothering Mr. Rather.
Jakemanjack: "Why does that bother you and make you think of the titanic?"
Because they were enjoying themselves without knowing that the ship was about to go down. If you think my motivation is that I wish I could have been at the party, I'm sure I can't convince you I'm not by just saying I'm not. But I'm not.
. Oddly, lots of people trusted them to become business managers because they were good bloggers, but the enterprise involved sloughing off the blogger's attitude. Indeed, there was never any reason to think that because a person is good at blogging he'd be good at business.
It reminds me of something in Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. My brother has my copy at the moment, but from what I recall, he talks about why people get into the restaurant business. According to him, a harbinger of doom is the people who do it out of passion, whether for cooking, or theme restaurants, or to show off their good taste. Their passion blinds them to the down-and-dirty grind of running a restaurant from dealing with health inspectors, kitchen staffs that may not be legal immigrants, food deliveries, all the minute details that have to be handled in order to have a successful establishment. As he put it, there's more to running a business than swanning around signing checks like Rick in Casablanca.
I think we're seeing the same thing here. Passion and ambition are worthless without solid business sense.
Jakemanjack: I don't watch CNN so I don't wonder anything about them. I believe that their paid reporters are identified as such, however.
As for Drudge, I rarely view his site, and have a low opinion of his ethics.
I'm not sure how many people here want OSM to fail. I don't. I just don't see what they offer and am not impressed by their fanfare and their lack of preparation.
Ann: In response to your latest observation: To me, the problem is that OSM looks like a corporate portal (the ads appearing there so far are via doubleclick.net), has some stellar bloggers linked, but thus far providing less than scintillating reading. (Obviously, there was no advance preparation for the debut along the lines of special columns to attract/retain attention once the big media party drew viewers.)
The featured blog article most of today was a lament about having to not shave armpits for some reason (I wasn't interested enough to find out). This might be cute or funny in a personal blog setting but isn't attractive in a semi-professional setting. It is rather like publishing Jeff Goldstein's Thursday effort without any disclaimer for the masses not "in the know." So the answer to the question, "Has anything been learned?" appears to continue to be "No."
It seems to me the folks behind OSM want to be seen as semi-pro "players" in the journalism game, and they have attracted a few high profile profesionals, but I have seen nothing there so far that doesn't reek of rank amateur.
Emcliff: LOL.
On the envy theme. I wonder how many people who signed up are now envious of me -- with my bloggerly attitude and freedom from that witless enterprise.
This has the whiff of Dogtown and Z-Boys vs. corporate skaters or Fugazi vs. Green Day (sorry, but Green Day ain't real punk)
Ann is Fugazi, In N Out Burgers, and Johnny Cash,
OSM is Good Charlotte, McDonald's, and Shania Twain.
Nothing wrong with going corporate or making $$$, just stay "real" (I hate that phrase, but you know what I mean).
From DtP's swan song: "It wasn’t until Roger [L. Simon]’s little dust-up with Ann Althouse in late July/early August. . ."
Is that why you've taken on this crusade? I can't figure it out, absent some other motive, because it just doesn't seem inherently interesting. At all. OSM, or whatever, is boring, as you've made clear, over and over. How much longer are you going to grind on that point?
I wish I hadn't been beaten to putting up another OSM site, but our spoof is funnier...
On the envy theme. I wonder how many people who signed up are now envious of me -- with my bloggerly attitude and freedom from that witless enterprise.
You know, Ann, one can't help but wonder -- has your relationship with Glenn suffered at all because of OSM?
Okay, that's an indiscrete question, I know.
But...it must not be easy given his OSM alliance.
Cheers,
Victoria
Emcliff, you're wrong. Boku wa Yukio des' ne? I'm also not Jeff Goldstein, Walter in Denver, or Gary Farber. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are actually a large number of people in Colorado, and more than one of us can type. I haven't been around because I don't spend every bloody minute at my keyboard, though God knows it seems that way sometimes. I'm currently in the middle of writing a novel, and there was a Broncos game, and I had a date.
Jake-etc, he's talking about me. Just to fill you in, jake, I'm a regular commenter at both Ann's and Roger's site (and Emcliff might have gotten a little bit more recognition if he'd have used my actual web cognomen, "Charlie", rather than Charles.) I actually live in Superior, but say Boulder because who the hell knows where Superior, Colorado is?
I'm also someone who spent a good bit of time with Roger, talking about various ideas of what PJM/OSM could be and do. Spent about 50 hours on it total, which at my consulting rates is, well, a lot of money. A lot of money, I charge about what a Wall Street lawyer does. (In my day job, I architect big high-performance systems for Fortune 50 companies.) I don't work for them; we never converged. The difference is, apparently, I'm a little more sophisticated about these things than Dennis --- I know that if it isn't in writing it didn't happen, that ideas are about a mil a dozen, and that when you're looking at a start up, you exchange a lot of ideas that might never go anywhere because putting together the funding and getting the business started is a lot harder than having an idea. In other words, I'm a grown up. Dennis apparently isn't. Roger and I are still friends; Dennis has decided not to be.
As far as jeff jarvis, I kind of wish people would notice that Jeff is a big name in old media and a principle in an internet blogging startup as well. No reason to think there might be some subtext there, I suppose.
As to the "obsessed" thing, well, here's Ann --- well known, widely published law professor. But on this one topic, when I questioned whether the notion that Glenn Reynolds and Charles Johnson didn't get blogging seemed a little hard to credit, she resorted to misstatements, misquotations, straw man arguments, and flat out ad hominems --- things that a middle school debate coach wouldn't have let her get away with. All because she doesn't like the, um, idea and business model of OSM and turned them down?
I don't know what's up. Maybe she's not obsessing. Maybe she's having personal problems. Maybe she has trouble coping with people who disagree with her --- I've known entirely too many professors who developed that problem, having spent about 15 years in college and university myself. Maybe she's been on a five day bender and she's an angry drunk. I don't know. What I know is that someone who's usually the model of rational discourse, and proud of the high level of her comments, has ended up making a fool of herself in her arguments and pretty actively participating in lowering those very high standards. I started out trying to suggest she was over-reacting a little; I progressed to trying to point out that she was being irrational, as an admirer and long-time reader.
Now I'm just watching it the way you watch any acquaintance who has become self-destructive; you can't recover for someone else, and her reputation for honest discourse and rational argument isn't my responsibility. I kind of hope she's got some of it left when this particular self-destruction burns out.
I dunno, Charlie. From where I'm sitting (over here in Phoenix, in my pajamas), I'm with Ann and Dennis. Sure, Dennis is a little exciteable, but that makes his blog a fun read. There's just something about the progression of events, watching all this unfold, that tells me that Dennis knows what of he speaks, and that Roger Simon has been caught with his pants down, so to speak.
Nice for you to be chummy with Roger and all, but I don't see where your hostility to Ann is coming from. From what I've seen so far, OSM does not "get" blogging, whether or not its individual contributors do.
Personally, I'm enjoying all this kerfuffle, especially because it has zero real-world relevance to anything. But if you're going to make a big deal out of something and announce how you're going to revolutionize how the world gets its information, well, you better deliver or you deserve to be mocked.
Mock away, Ann!
Nice for you to be chummy with Roger and all, but I don't see where your hostility to Ann is coming from. From what I've seen so far, OSM does not "get" blogging, whether or not its individual contributors do.
What hostility? I haven't expressed anything but concern and confusion, both of which I certainly feel.
Sarah: Charlie (Superior)
Sloppy work. Fingerprints everywhere. Compare notes some other time.
What? Are you saying that it was sloppy work, with fingerprints of me being Jake-whatever everywhere? If so, you're gonna be deeply disappointed, because I'm really not Jake. Honest. I wouldn't invent a new identify for this, I prefer to keep my "brand." I did make an attempt to invent a new persona, "Seneca the Younger", just because I wanted to have my contributions on YARGB be associated with a little bit more formal, more rigorous tone and level of diction, but that got blown just today by Roger (which, by the way, was my fault: I mailed him a link to something I'd written without telling him I was trying to keep them separate.)
Oh, and I forgot, up above --- emcliff, you owe me that drink. As you say, "...if I had been right I would've expected a little more entertaining reply." I should hope so.
Charlie, that phrase "blown just today by Roger" jumped right out. Resonant!
"why did great bloggers lose the spirit of blogging?"
Maybe because they were greedy, and greed makes people do stupid things, n'est-ce pas?
Sarah, I'm not sure what you're on about, but I'm really and truly not Jakemanjack. I really and truly am Seneca. There are 16 or 17 people who blog at Yargb, including a number who are regulars both here and at Roger's, so if you see more than one link to yargb, maybe that's why?
Why don't you come out and say what you're doing the wink-wink-nudge-nudge about? I ain't getting it.
Ann says:
Charlie, that phrase "blown just today by Roger" jumped right out. Resonant!
Okay, here's another one I'm not getting. "My cover was blown" is a cliche, and the line not particularly resonant as far as I can see. If you mean that really, well thanks.
On the other hand, ripped screaming from its context this way, I can't help but wonder if you're not trying to use the more idiomatic sense, and are therefore suggesting that I have had homosexual relations just today with Roger.
Oh my God, Ann's suggesting I'm QUEEER. I am so CRUSHED. How can I ever go ON, knowing that someone has suggested in a big name blog that I'm a FAGGOT?
Cripes, it really is high school.
tdocer: "urious. The role of the subjunctive mood in English is to denote the writer's/speaker's belief or conviction, or want, hope, or desire. It is not to make the written/spoken phrase less serious."
tdocer, ignorance is not bliss, it's just sad. You might want to look into the hypothetical subjunctive, or irrealis.
Oh, btw, jakemanjack, my email is open in my profile... drop me a note.
On the Cialis front - since you brought it up - doesn't the generic name (tadalafil) sound like a french man amazed that he has an erection? "Oh mon cherie, Ta Da - La Fill!" Who comes up with these names anyway?
Oh, and I worked with Levitra (Seriously!)about 20 years ago, nice girl but she had these strange growths on her ear lobes, her boy friend (Marlon) was really attractive though.
DKK
You don't do trackbacks but I finally posted on this
http://donsurber.blogspot.com/2005/11/osmmsm-wtf.html
Charles Johnson and Roger L Simon have dropped the name OSM. It's Pajamas Media again.
Okay, a different view.
I have a blog about NASCAR (quit wrinkling your noses) on AOL (okay, now you can wrinkle your noses). If how high up the totem pole one ranks when various search terms on the Googles or Yahoos of this world -- like, say, "nascar blog" -- matters, I'm popular as far as NASCAR blogs go. Hardly in the heavy hitter league of Reynolds or Malkin et al, but I do all right in my little corner of the blogosphere.
Ann, when I read your comment about blogging for the love of it, I had to chuckle. See, being on AOL doesn't give me the option of working with BlogAds or AdSense. I can't sell advertising on my AOL blog, because I can't touch the page code to insert links for the ads. AOL has inserted a banner ad on all of the blogs it hosts, but it's strictly their program and no one who has a blog there sees a dime out of it (there's a good write-up about it on today's Washington Post; the story and more is on my other blog here if you care to look). So if you blog on AOL, you're really doing it for the love.
My blog is listed in the Blogroll area of OSM or Pajamas Media or whatever it's being called today. It hasn't done anything for me I'm aware of as far as generating traffic, and no one is pulling posts from it for the Sports area.
Should OSM/PM ever offer something of genuine value to me, since as mentioned I can't participate in any ad anything, I'd be happy for it. As it is, though, right now it's just another link and no more.
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