The Journal of Ordinary Gentlemen
[bumped to the top and the front page for more visibility – Erik]
Two recent stories got me thinking about a pet project/experiment that’s been percolating in my brain for a bit now: this one discusses the importance of the feminist blogosphere for a community of young women; this one explains the financial difficulties involved in actually sustaining that blogosphere. Which brings us to the question of whether blogging is best thought of as publishing, broadcasting, or a sort of vanity project.
Generally, I think it’s a combination of the latter two, but our retrospective mood around here lately has renewed my curiosity about moving into the first category.
Specifically, the idea of a one-off League of Ordinary Gentlemen newspaper. Here’s what I’m thinking (and please chime in if the idea sounds terrible):
- we collect about twenty of our favorite posts via some sort of collective voting on posts suggested in a comments section,
- perhaps we also include a print-only article or two as well,
- then I lay them out in a journal/newspaper form maybe adding some vintage advertising art I have on file,
- next, we take orders via Paypal,
- I take them to a local print shop and have those newspapers printed up, and mail them out,
- And the cost would be printing + postage + one dollar of profit, which would be put back into the site expenses here.
That sounds like fun.Report
I like the idea. I’m in.Report
Too bad my mom’s not still around. She’d buy, like, 500.Report
Good! My thought is we should have at least one piece from everybody. How to pick them, I don’t know. Maybe if everyone suggested a piece, but the people who write here suggested two: their favorite of their own posts and one favorite from someone else, and then we had a pool to choose from. Or, is that too complicated?
Also, of course, I’d like to know what mgmt thinks about all of this first.Report
Tod’s Second Date story needs to go in there. It’s goddamn fishing brilliantly written, for one thing, and it’s obvious from the traffic records that it strikes a real chord all across the Internet.
I’ll think about any other candidates that spring to mind.Report
Boegiboe’s Sound and Vision is really well done, too.
Jason’s going to be hard to pick.Report
I agree that Jason’s would be hard to pick because he’s written so many good posts- same with E.D. That’s where their favorites would probably be helpful.Report
I second Sound & Vision. It’s a favorite of mine.Report
I had that one in mind. There was a great one about marriage by Lisa Kramer, but I’ve no idea how we’d get permission from her at this point.Report
Gotta be an email address associated with her in the comments.Report
Okay, I’ll look for that. Here’s the post, incidentally.Report
Oooo, how do you get that enlarged pull out from the essay text? That’s very cool.Report
I think the software used to do it. I don’t remember figuring out how though.
Incidentally, here’s one from Tony Comstock that I remember really liking quite a bit.
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There’s a way to get the text like that, Tod, but it’s an extra few steps. I can figure it out again (haven’t done it in a while) and let you know.Report
Oh, and thanks!Report
I like the idea too.
I say we donate the proceedings, though.Report
Both dollars?Report
We could send it to Tiger Beatdown.
Sorry, that was small.Report
This would indeed be fun. Might I suggest that the posts be selected in something of an anthology form, with roughly an equal number of posts selected for each of the three years we’ve been around? I suspect this would make the selection process a bit easier, and would help better show the development of the site.
I’m thinking that it wouldn’t be too hard to narrow down to 15 to 20 posts per year to be voted upon, with the top 6 or 7 to make the journal. I would expect that Erik and I could take care of the selections for 2009, perhaps you and Jason or Jaybird could take care of the 2010 selections, and two of the more recently announced gents the 2011 posts.
Unfortunately, Scott Payne’s post with the original site proposal on his old personal blog has been lost in the ether and is only partially recoverable on the Internet Wayback Machine (you may have guessed that I am starting work on that long promised history of the League post).Report
I definitely like the anthology format. I’m wondering if we could still crowd source the culling of good pieces for each year, since I’m not sure how many of us would have time to be directly responsible for going through an individual year. I could certainly start working on 2010, but can see how we might get bogged down that way.Report
Yeah, I’m trying to think of a better way than I initially proposed. The trouble with crowd sourcing for the first two years, and especially 2009, is that the site’s readership was just starting to develop, and I don’t think there’s a ton of current readers that can go back all the way to the beginning, or at least almost all the way so memories aren’t going to do a good job of coming up with candidates.
On a personal and selfish level, there would be a lot of sentimental value for me in going through those early posts. There were some incredible exchanges in the first two or three months of the site’s existence when most of the posts were basically extended responses to earlier posts. That format eventually proved unsustainable for various reasons, but there was some stuff in there that was fantastic: a series on abortion where, IIRC, the contributors actually addressed each other’s arguments; a series on science, theology, and atheism; and the lengthy round one of the still-interminable liberaltarianism discussion.
But now I’m starting to digress into that LOOG history post that I’m writing.Report
Well I can start going through 2010. It’ll just take some time. I do think the anthology idea gets us away from an obvious pitfall- we all best remember the most recent posts, right?
Incidentally, it occurs to me that the posts might need an occasional footnote in a print edition, or maybe an introductory paragraph, if they’re referring to something specific. But that will probably make many of them less time-sensitive than they might otherwise appear.Report
Another thought – some of them might need minor editing. I’m not sure that in a paper anthology having links and quick references to something that someone else “recently posted” works so well.Report
That’s where the footnotes or introductory paragraphs come in. I do think we can get people to give their old posts a once over before reprinting if there are things they’ve wanted to change.Report
Not to mention that sometimes a post turned into something greater with back-n-forth in the comments. Editing may be a really good idea.Report
Oh yeah- I totally think people should be allowed to make edits to their own pieces. I’m sure I’d want to.Report
It occurs to me that a lot of great posts are very, very time sensitive. Would we shay way from those, or say “Damn it, people still want to read about what Glenn Beck said in 2010!” The former seems better, which might help in the narrowing process.Report
That’s probably better- I think that the ones I remember best were ones that were less time sensitive.Report
Less time sensitive posts also have a tendency to be less inflammatory or divisive, which is probably a good thing as well.Report
A self-publishing, book-on-demand site would probably be best. The product would wind up looking nice, and the product could remain available whenver someone cared to purchase it (no inventory for anyone to sit on).
There are copyright issues, as I understand that each of the authors maintains copyright in the writing, with a license given to the blog for use here. I have no problem licensing anything I’ve written to Erik or Mark or whomever for purposes of the Journal of the Ordinary Gentlemen, provided that the proceeds are then used in an appropriate fashion.
On that note, I suggest the proceeds go to defraying the costs of maintaining the blog. Anything in excess of that should go to a charity of some kind. I’m not insistent on that, but it seems like a logical thing to do.Report
This brings up an interesting question, Burt. Would we be allowed to publish a piece in the anthology later, with another publication?Report
My assumption is that if it’s a book-on-demand site, we (meaning the editor, presumptively meaning Erik) could add or take away from its contents as we liked. I’m not 100% clear on the nuts and bolts of that sort of thing, though.
In terms of the legalities, that depends on the terms of the license agreement, but we’ve got a few lawyers here who could probably whip up something appropriate. I’d be happy to help out with that, in my copious free time.Report
Yeah, I assume we would have to get permission and that probably not everyone would give us permission. Whatever happened to the Plumb Lines people, for example? I’d imagine there are some who would turn us down.
I’ll look into the book-on-demand sites. I was thinking newsprint because it’s traditionally cheapest and sort of fits the aesthetics of the site, but with the publish-on-demand sites, other types might be cheaper.Report
I’d be down. My (purely selfish) problem is that my comments are much, much better than my posts.Report
Yeah, I actually thought about that. Do you have any particular comments that could be excerpted or expanded? It seems to be your medium of choice.Report
Nah. I’d put my post about why I love pro wrestling up for votes. If it makes it, it makes it. If it fails it fails.Report
Actually, I’d like to get a little something by everyone for the variety.Report
I’d buy a book just full of Jaybirds commentsReport
Deep Thoughts, by Jaybird.Report
Jaybird’s with a apostrophe that is.
Title: Jaybird’s Juicy Germane Genius Genuflections on Gillions of Jazzy Jags
Ok, the title could use some work. 🙂Report
I’d suggest instead of or in addition to such a journal there be a segment in the masthead of “greatest hits” designed for new readers to get a feel for the site. There is such a section on Front Porch Republic that was extremely valuable for me to grasp what that site is all about when I first started visiting there.Report
Rufus – this is a good idea. Let’s start an email back and forth with everyone interested to piece this together and hammer out details.Report
Does anyone have the old group email list? We could just add to that.Report
Great idea. May I also suggest a different idea (which could weave in to the original one). It would be a great practice if the writer of the original opinion piece could do a summary wrap up of the discussion as it was played out.
Obviously this would be an option, and would be inappropriate for some content (such as the ones that don’t lead to debates), but it would be useful if the original poster summarized their take — biases and all — on the overall discussion. Consider it more of a useful convention or norm than a requirement. This could possibly feed into Rufus’ newspaper. It wouldn’t be practical to list all 250 comments, but sometimes the comments are every bit as valuable as the original piece.Report
Yeah, I’m sort of thinking of the compilations they do of famous writers’ op ed pieces, where there’s often a paragraph at the beginning or footnotes to explain the larger context. A paragraph afterwards would probably be good too.Report
That sounds awesome, I’d definitely buy one. Sites like Blurb do on-demand printings, though something like that might involve more steps than necessary.
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Good! Maybe you’d let us use this one?
https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2010/12/07/exceptionalism-imperialism-and-the-necessity-of-%E2%80%9Cclosed-systems%E2%80%9D/Report
I’ll look into Blurb. I found some newspaper print-on-demand places that could do it for about $3 a paper, but I’m going to call around our local printers to see how cheap it is if I go pick them up and mail them myself. Someone might want to look into print-on-demand magazines as well. Some format will work best. Also, I’ve got lots of graphic artist friends, if that’s of interest.Report