I’ve been trying to coin phrases since I started this gig in 2005—fraugs (fraud blogs), googlings (Google nuts), spitter (Twitter spammer) etc.—and not a one has stuck except “hamsterbating,” which I didn’t actually create but was credited for in an online dictionary.
I only bring it up now because if Danny Sullivan gets credit for “Associated Blogs” then I’m gonna blow my top, kick some dirt, and whine a whole lot about it. In 2006, I wrote “Seeds of an Associated Blogosphere” and have mentioned it every chance I got since then, including last month in “The AP’s Battle for Relevance in a Decentralized Universe.”
Associated Blogosphere is mine. I want it. Replace hamsterbating with it, please, whoever actually runs the Internet neologisms department.
Since Danny brought up my concept, and in the spirit of great minds thinking alike (because I assume he missed those articles), let’s take a look at Danny’s post, entitled “Dammit, I’m a Journalist, Not a Blogger: Time for Online Journalists to Unite?”
In a nutshell, Danny bemoans all the special treatment the traditional mainstream press gets while bloggers get “bupkes.”
“I wanted to float the idea that perhaps it’s time for an Associated Blogs to take on the Associated Press,” he writes.
That should read: I wanted to float the idea that it’s time, like murdok’ Jason Lee Miller has repeatedly suggested, for an Associated Blog[osphere] to take on the Associated Press.
After that, we’re cool, and ready to cheer on some classic Sullivan-esque ranting:
“we’ve got a newspaper industry increasingly portraying us as part of an evil axis that’s killing them. Blogs steal their attention, and Google steals their visitors.”
Yeah! That sucks!
“I don’t recall Google calling me in, or TechCrunch, or ReadWriteWeb, or VentureBeat [or murdok] or any number of other online media outlets and asking about our financial health and ways they could help us. I don’t recall any groups proposing special laws to help our financial health. But I do get sick and tired of seeing the journalism we do not getting near enough credit from mainstream media sources that depend on us, plus us being dismissed as mere bloggers.”
Preach it!
“I’m a journalist, not a blogger. I use a blog platform to publish, but that doesn’t make me a second class citizen in the journalism world.”
Rock on, Danny, you tell’em. and I’m all about promoting “your” idea of an Associated Blogosphere, or Online Journalism Association or United Bloggers, I guess, whichever you prefer, so long as, if everybody goes the Associated Blog[osphere] route, I get mentioned in the Wikipedia article about it. ;-D Cheers.
