My Blogosphere Whines For 2009

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MY BLOGOSPHERE WHINES FOR 2009….Today is New Year’s Eve, so here are my top ten whiny, blog-related pet peeves. They are in no particular order:

  1. Blogs without comment sections. Or, blogs with comment sections that require you to go through some kind of painful registration process just to leave a one-sentence note.
  2. Bloggers who don’t put their email addresses somewhere on the blog. I don’t mind looking around for it a bit (keeps the mind sharp, you know), but put it somewhere, OK?
  3. Blogs that provide only partial RSS feeds. See also point #5, which actually bugs me a lot more.
  4. Bloggers who are too damn lazy to check their links after they post something. Come on, people.
  5. “Teaser” blogs that put only the first paragraph or two on the main page and force you to click “continue” if you want to read the whole thing. This is both annoying and pointless. It only takes a second or two to scroll past a blog post you don’t want to read, after all. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Felix Salmon.)
  6. People who say “blog” when they really mean “blog post.”
  7. Blogs with lousy (or nonexistent) search capability. Mine, for example.
  8. Top ten lists that are plainly larded with filler because the listmaker couldn’t actually think of ten things to write about.
  9. Bloggers who can’t count.

I fully expect these problems to be completely resolved starting tomorrow — or, at the very least, on January 20th. If they aren’t, a blue ribbon commission will be appointed to deal with them. You have been warned.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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