Truth + Blogging - A Sunday Post

lucy liu
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

A topic most bloggers have to cope with on their rise up the blogosphere, and more importantly with their own ethics and common sense is how "transparent" and "honest" they want to be. You can rewrite Reuters, talk about new gadgets, be in awe of Google, preach 2.0 Microsoft, blog about blogging, promote your VC investments, talk about the band you sound engineer around the world, while emphasising the relocation benefits of Alaska, Colorado, Chicago, Portland and Santa Monica. Maybe you are just a Streaming Billionaire already cashed out that doesnt like Podcasting. Irrespective, the key is to not just offer a 'Stupid White Man' perspective on the world - what the audience want is something honest. It's like reality TV - there needs to be some scripting, but the immediate real elements are best. "Duh", the producers of Six Feet Under, Lost or Desperate Housewives would say, in some to many or most cases we don't even want the truth we just want entertainment : Half the entertainment with podcasts is them paying out on each other with fictionalised romances, lusting, rivalries and factions. Similarly in fiction, we want insight not necessarily truth. Ironically though first novels (with name changes and creative license) that are most powerful are often most autobiographical. Confusing eh ?

So Jessica Coen, who we love, for having a gramatically enjoyable slanging match with Page of NYT, now has her parents and truth to deal with :

"TITLE : So, no bukkake stories. Got it.

SUBJECT : I've done a handful of radio interviews, but yesterday I was contacted by a station that, coincidentally, happens to broadcast in the very market where I was raised and where my family still resides. I told my mother that I'd be on this station, to which she said, "Please try not to say anything that will embarass your father or me. We have to live here, you know." Do her parents know what 'bukkake' is ? Do they read her blog every day ? Would any of us know what bukkake is without the Web ? (I wonder if in Arts Departments at Universities, having studied Greek Philosophy and other related subjects if there is a course called 'Internet Blogging and its Impact on the Very Long History of Philosophy and the Accelerated Death of Knowledge and Meaning"

We like Coen because the core elements of our favourite website blog of all time : Suck.com, which no longer exists of course : intellectually elitist yet freeform, anonymous and non-commercial yet bought by poster child Wired.com, subversive yet basking in consumerism, never replicated (feedmag.com was good for a while, "returning soon ;) their website says :") Coen's 25 years old, edits Gawker - a much better ADD read about entertainment than Scoble is about Microsoft, she's good looking, knows how to pull together a sexy sentence, and hunts gorillas for fun. We also know without knowing y'know, that she sits at home no richer or poorer than any of us, and is driven to type out these words, and when she smiles to NYT staff, it's not because she dislikes them or is trying to get material, she probably does feel more kinship with other writers/editors/subbies than celebrities, readers or Group Publishers. Oops, this post was about truth not the interface of A-List Bloggers and New York's Print Gossip sections : We blame Ana Marie Cox, of Suck.com fame (their original sub-editor, then later main writer) now a Coen 'Nick Denton; sister editor of www.wonkette.com and while we love Ana Marie's smarts, we find wonkette.com a particularly boring subject matter for someone's whose writing could be and has been so good. Get Nasty Ana Marie.

See how easy it is not to be honest, or talk about other people, or argue our intelligence or smarts. With my blog, some like the ladies - certain groups skew indie, others like hollywood, others read for the RSS updates, others are Australian, some podcasting, some recruiting, others search, and my dad and brother read because I signed them up to my email bloglet.com subscription. OK, that's enough honesty here - What I am really supposed to be doing here is building a brand with leading American players in the RSS, Podcasting, Tagging and 2.0 space so I can get Australian rights to your service and implement them here successfully. At the same time Im educating the Australian market on the opportunity for technologies like RSS which are huge in America, but not available from one company across a country with a land mass similar to North America but the population of California. My final goal is to communicate me to you, and let you decide from there. But, the new venture we are launching in Australia : Feed Corp Pty Ltd, will have a blog : http://www.lifeofastartup.com, in which the home/office/house we will be using will have MP3 recording and streaming built into the walls, phone lines and meeting rooms, so you can hear first hand the trials and tribulations we will encounter as we go for broke in building the leading RSS Organisation in Australia, not to mention our global ajax rss plays like www.feedtagger.com - Its Sunday, now I pray, and not to Scoble ! Instead, from my favourite novel of last 2 years Shantaram : "It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make,....................." Its 1000 pages answering the question about truth, it may not provide a more truthful or entertaining blog, but it is the best read you will get on the print side of the Internet.