Alan Gutierrez

I am creating weekly email newsletter for Think New Orleans. This is in addition to the subscribe by email option on the Think New Orleans weblog. It is a traditional newsletter. It arrives in email, on a Monday morning, to tell a person what’s going to happen in the coming week.

• Subscribe to the Weekly Think New Orleans Newsletter

This is going to cause some confusion. When people get my weekly newsletter, they are going to want a newsletter just like it for their organization. (I am working on a service that will publish a newsletter from a weblog. A real email newsletter, by selecting a specific tag, or tag feed.)

I avoid the term with neighborhood groups, because they are starting with nothing, or a poorly maintained web site. They eed a simple way to publish. A web site where they make frequent updates that look like email messages sounds simple to them. It is like a “newsletter”.

If I were to say “blog”, they might think of MySpace or personal diaries. They might search the web and come across an article like the following…

The second thing blogs do is - to invoke Marx - seize the means of production. It’s hard to underestimate what a huge deal this is. For as long as journalism has existed, writers of whatever kind have had one route to readers: They needed an editor and a publisher. Even in the most benign scenario, this process subtly distorts journalism. You find yourself almost unconsciously writing to please a handful of people - the editors looking for a certain kind of story, the publishers seeking to push a particular venture, or the advertisers who influence the editors and owners. Blogging simply bypasses this ancient ritual.

It creates more work. I’ve had people say, “I don’t want to blog”, or I’m sorry, “I can’t stop thinking of it as something that my son does”.

Some of the organizations for which I’ve established web sites, are further down the road, however.

Bill Knecht and Paul Schafer both know what a blog is. Bill Knecht already runs a very succesful email newsletter. He follows the ettiqutte of infrequent messages, and regularly scheduled announcements. They understand the concept, without quoting Marx. They were enthused about creating the Eracism Blog from the outset.

Thus, it’s not a hard and fast rule. The model for blogging is “conversation”. “Conversation” is the model for ERACE New Orleans. It is a good fit.

Other organizations are not looking to converse on the web. They converse in person. They want to use the web to publish and coordinate. For them it is not siezing the means of production, it’s posting the next meeting agenda.