Posted on 07/11/2003 6:55:08 PM PDT by Political Numbers Guy
Are Freepers still winning the online war?
I think we still are. But as conservatives, we need to ask what we can be doing better. One area in which we can and do must do more is blogs. What are blogs, you ask? Theyre personal web journals run by online pundits, and theyre achieving enormous popularity both online and in the media. Blogs like InstaPundit.com, the Volokh Conspiracy, and Right Wing News are daily must reads where some of the best minds opine on the really important stories of the day, and where upstart bloggers (folks not unlike you and me) can get noticed just for covering the news well. Great blogs are like mini-Free Republics, and theyre growing at mind-boggling warp speed.
Grassroots conservatives have yet to make their presence known in the blogging arena. Blogdex.net tracks the most popular stories in blogs, and the worst sorts of lies about our President and our mission of liberation in Iraq top the charts every day. Today, its CBS News big lie that Bush knew that the Nigerian intel was false something directly contradicted by its own story (first exposed by blogger Eugene Volokh). Despite a healthy supply of intelligent right-leaning bloggers, conservative stories always linger toward the bottom of the list.
As a longtime lurker and occasional poster, it surprises me that Freepers largely havent 1) picked up on the truly brilliant material that is produced by bloggers everyday the good ones are seriously 10 times better than anything youll read on any op-ed page, and 2) struck out into this new medium ourselves by starting blogs to expand Free Republics sphere of influence.
Free Republic is a great rallying point for conservatives but to truly defeat the Left, we need to be bigger than just one website. Bloggers have created value by building a network of thousands of smaller sites that are catching on like wildfire, and unfortunately the Left has taken advantage of it. Theres even talk of blogs becoming the liberal talk radio. Theres still time to stop this. By dominating Free Republic, talk radio, and blogs, there is no way Democrats and the Left can win at the grassroots.
There is something you can do right now. Start a blog. Go to http://www.blogspot.com and set up a free site for yourself. Start reading and linking to other conservative-minded blogs and your favorite Freeper threads. Youll notice your readership start growing right away. Post the best stuff you in the blogosphere on Free Republic. Just 50 or 100 successful new conservative blogs can tilt the balance in a profound way and draw even more attention to our efforts here on Free Republic.
The expansion of direct personal publishing by bloggers is something we have to pay attention to. Free Republic could benefit immensely by giving Freepers free and/or premium blog hosting attracting traffic and links from thousands of other blogs. The liberal rag Salon did this, and this is partly why the Left started gaining traction in blogging. AOL is now rolling out their own blogging product, and this blog piece talks about how it can and will be used to promote AOL content. Hosting blog sites on Free Republic makes plenty of sense from both an activism and a marketing perspective. Case in point: instead of just one fundraising thermometer on top of every FR page, thered be hundreds more on popular blogs hosted on FreeRepublic.com, each linked to by dozens of outside blogs.
What does everyone think of these ideas? Most importantly, how can we make this happen?
Aw shucks! [clasps hands behind back, looks down sheepishly and kicks a few pebbles]
Be careful, you just might start something. I don't have the inclination to do a daily blog, and am mainly a hit-and-run FReeper, but who knows, maybe a "wheneverly" blog may still have some merit.
I'll look into it, God help us all. :^)
And a growing ego problem.
I guess I should ask, 'How difficult is it to set up a blog at blogspot.com and will they begin demanding a fee when hits start to accumulate?'
Not difficult at all. Go there, pick a name, pick a design, and start typing.
They won't demand a fee at all, since they put an ad at the top of your blog. Your bandwidth allotment would be 250MB/mo, which will be quite enough for you unless you get very popular. If you started hitting that limit, you would have to upgrade to "Blogspot Plus," which is $5/mo (and has other benefits you may or may not want; see here for details).
I blame you! :^)
Mainly a bunch of backfill boilerplate for now, but we'll see where it goes.
2) Like in Iraq the RATS and the left have begun to bushwhack us and are engaged in low intensity warfare via their control of the media. Trying to wear us down.
3) The web is still our domain. But as in all wars the left is learning to use it as well. We need more pundits and a better fund-raising and organizing apparatus. We also need more FReepers willing to FReep. Being a FReeper isn't just about coming to this site and posting or lurking. We need to man the barricades and take the streets.
Hehe thanks. Flattery will get you everywhere. :^)
Hopefully my readers won't have to eat out of a can for long. I am currently reading Ann Coulter's eye-opening book Treason, and you can expect some commentary to emerge on the old blogsite.
As it is, I find myself saying "Oh my God!" a lot more than I expected to as I read it. If it weren't for her extensive citation of verifiable sources, I would swear the book was fiction. Be afraid, be very afraid.
While the blogsite doesn't allow for feedback per se (a deficiency in my view), I always welcome it here, where I the benefit of collective genius to aid me when I stray afield in my musings.
Thanks for the inspiration, and be well!
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