A few visitors e-mailed asking where were the posts they'd grown to expect today?
This was outlined to members who are signed up for the gina & krista round-robin last Friday.
The New York Times was going to have to cover the Downing Street Memo. I said I'd bite my tongue in their early reporting but when they went to far in distortions (it was never a "maybe" that they would), I'd make that the focus for the day.
I'd assumed it would be a Thursday. I wasn't expecting that they'd do a "news analysis" on Tuesday. When I saw that, I knew that's the main issue for today.
So we left that up.
That meant holding Ruth's Morning Edition Report (which will go up tomorrow). That meant no other entry this morning. I wanted it to be what anyone saw when they dropped by. And with 1379 e-mails (a new record), we did have a lot of visitors. (Thanks to Wally, Maria, Martha, Elaine and Natalie who circulated the post via e-mail to friends in their circle. A lot of e-mails start off with phrases like "My nephew Wally . . .," or "my former teacher Maria ___ . . .," etc. "sent this to me.") This goes to what Rebecca has been talking about: be your own media. (We've talked about that here as well.) (Thanks to other members who circulated the post as well. I haven't read even a third of the e-mails yet.)
That was left up, for the visitors, because it was important.
I didn't want two or three posts this morning that people would have to go through (most of us are pressed for time) when the focus should be on one thing.
No one commented on this yet, but we did less links on Monday in our two entries on that morning's New York Times. Why?
Gina and Krista have a poll every week. For two weeks in a row, members have stated that they'd prefer to have a few posts highlighted. They feel that Cliff Notes on the Times is unneeded. The members responding to the poll voted (82%) that they'd rather have something they sent in overlooked then have every item up.
If I'm not feeling well in the morning, we'll still do a link-fest. But we're not the publicists for the New York Times or your "quick read" for the New York Times.
Both polls on this stressed that visitors were welcome. But we're of the left, for the left and by the left. Members are still shocked that centrist guy bothered to e-mail this site (shocked and bothered since we are in the middle of an election and since neither that guy or his site had been mentioned at this site; they still haven't been named). If you're late on this, Rebecca blogged on him and his organization at her site. But instead of taking it up with her, he wants to waste our time by trying to pull me into it. The membership never wants to hear from him again. They are offended for Rebecca and they are offended for the community.
They feel he wasted valuable time (he did, my opinion) that we don't have to address his nonsense about something that had never been up at this site.
We're not the mainstream, people. We're not here to provide you with a voice because you disagree with us. We're a resource/review for the left.
Start your own site and deal with your centrist issues there. This isn't the Times. We don't need an entry with "Psuedo left says, center says and right says."
We never pretended to be that, we're not going to be that.
We're here to share ideas on the left. We're here to provide resources so that people can discover voices on the left and get to know them. From there, they can figure out if that voice speaks to them personally. If it does, great. If it doesn't they know to ignore it. Not all voices (on the left) will speak to everyone on the left.
We do cover the New York Times (currently). That's been because a) I subscribe to it, b) it has an amazing reach and c) there were hopes that it could return to actual reporting. All three are probably changing.
Ruth covers NPR to focus on what they're talking about.
If that's confused anyone, I'm sorry, the community's sorry. But we are a left community and your ideas of privatizing social security, or destroying reproductive rights, or any other shift to the right position isn't anything we're interested in here.
We'll be dealing with this (and other issues) in the interview Beth will conduct next month. She will choose the questions (but she is paying attention to questions that Gina, Krista and myself are passing on to her -- if she thinks a question is important, she'll ask it).
This site doesn't exist for the non-left to air their issues and concerns. I'd strongly recommend you start your own site and address your concerns there.
We have always been a resource/review for the left.
You can read. This is a public site. You can gripe in your e-mail.
But we aren't here to plug your belief in "private accounts."
I hope that's clear. We're not centrists, we're not here to plug them or their ideas. Those ideas are heard all of the over place (check the latest FAIR study). This space was created for the left.
For members and visitors expecting a review of Summerland (or hoping for one) this Sunday in The Third Estate Sunday Review. Jess got an e-mail yesterday that first had him puzzled and then, when he realized it was nonsense, had him mad. I can relate to that. We (Ava and I) are hoping to catch a show tonight.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
