Surfette

Debate: Play by today's rules, or change the game?

(Note: Cross-posted from www.blogher.org -- LS)

"The A-list? Sometimes I think it's stupid. But if you don't play into it then you don't get the visibility--and I think it is important to get visibility for what you do. It's a Catch-22: You have to play their game but their game kind of sucks."  --Private conversation with a woman who has blogged for six years about her life and her work as a developer

"It gets very tiring to be the "Who" Horton never hears...don't intimate that I and others like me don't exist simply because you don't hear us. Or because you don't like what you hear."     --Roxanne Cooper of Rox Populi, responding to Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly

It's time we got back to rocketing the conversation about women and blogging to higher ground. Like a different galaxy. Now that we've demonstrated where (some of) the women bloggers are, let's leap-frog tokenism, push past lip-service, and frame a discussion about our future with this technology (not their plans for it).

The BlogHer Debate question for 2005 is this: Women bloggers, how do you want the world to learn about what you're creating -- if at all? Do you want to play by today's rules or change the game? Because, really, it's your call. Now that women represent between 43 percent and 56 percent of all bloggers, we're in familiar territory.

Yet at the same time, as we all know, women are virtually missing-in-action in the game of best-known blog listings, like the Technorati Top 100 and TLB Ecosphere, which rank blogs based on the number of incoming links (not quality). The miniscule number of women on these lists is as unrepresentative of women bloggers as the number of women CEOs in the Fortune 500 (eight) is to the number of women working (nearly 50 percent). Bottom-line: It's hard to find you. And if you care, then it looks like we'll have to fix that ourselves.

But--do you care? Even if you have no interest in appearing on any of these lists yourself, is it a good thing or a bad thing for women bloggers that some men (bloggers and/or media types with huge audiences) either cannot find us or can get away with saying they cannot find us? Hint: A simple yes or no is not an adequate answer.

Let me be more specific. Here's the list of questions I'll ask in our opening debate on July 30, where Charlene Li and Halley Suitt will strap themselves into the hot-seat for 45 minutes. Take a shot at answering them yourselves or, if you prefer, add some you'd like to ask on July 30:

The BlogHer Debate

1. Does the lack of links from link-counters and the so-called A-list represent real, institutional barriers to entry or contrived barriers to entry--economically, personally, professionally, culturally? Does the lack of links hurt/help/not affect women bloggers who seek to:

• Gain professional recognition, credibility and rewards (including funding and community)?
• Gain personal recognition and credibility and rewards (including readers and community)?
• Generate revenue via advertising and/or sales?
• Make a living?
• Make a cultural change?
• Advocate for an opinion or a perspective?

2. Does playing by the existing rules of blog link-counters shout down alternative, diverse and new voices? Are we participating in our own demise? Why/Why not?

3. Do we owe it to ourselves and/or other women to win this game even if we don't personally care about the lists? Could separate ever really make us equal? Why/Why not?

4. If we want a meritocracy, do we need to code one ourselves? Let's rewrite the rules and/or write new code -- how do/don't you want to:

• Tell the world about your blog?
• Recruit the readers you're looking for?
• Communicate the quality of your blog to readers?
• Communicate the quality of your blog to potential sources of revenue?
• No, no, no - these questions suck almost as much as the A-list!

5. What should BlogHer Conference '05 work to accomplish today and in the next year to help individual women gain reater visibility and/or learning and/or success, by new definitions?

Related post: BlogHer Debate: Does the current link-based power structure matter?

Why BlogHer isn't likely to be passe in my lifetime

It's day uno of "the most powerful thought leader and business development conference in Silicon Valley," as the Always On Stanford Information Summit bills itself.

And I have to thank Tony Perkins. Because on a day when a male journalist (whom I have long respected but just met) challenged BlogHer to me in a private conversation as "anachronistic," I find the best proof of BlogHer's value to women in the speaker list for Always On.

When you read this list of Always On speakers below, do you see the value in BlogHer, a conference devoted to the exposure, education and community of women bloggers--and its women-only speaker's list?

Presenters at the Always On Stanford Information Summit
How to read this list
Blue	= Speakers who are women
Yellow	= Moderators
Orange	= Speakers or moderators asked to join more than one panel
1	Alice Gast, VP, Research, MIT
2	Allen Morgan, partner, Mayfield
3	Barry J. Kramer, partner, Fenwick & West LLP
4	Bill Joy, partner, Kleiner Perkins
5	Bill Joy, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
6	Bill Watkins, CEO, Seagate
7	Bob Sutton, professor, Stanford University
8	Brian Bean, head of investment banking, Montgomery & Co.
9	Cyrill Eltschinger, CEO, I.T. UNITED (China)
10	Dan Burstein, managing partner, Millennium Technology Ventures
11	Dan Gillmor, founder Grassroots Media
12	Dave Sifry, CEO, Technorati
13	David Goldberg, Vice President & General Manager, Music, Yahoo!
14	David Kelley, IDEO’s founder and chairman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
15	David Ketsdever, CEO/SVB Alliant
16	Doc Searls, Senior Editor, Linux Journal
17	Dr. Jichang Guang, director, Outsourcing Center, Tsinghua Science Park
18	Elizabeth Economy, director, Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
19	George Gilder, CEO, Gilder Technology
20	George Gilder, editor, Gilder Technology Report
21	Gordon Davidson, Chairman, Fenwick and West
22	Gus Tai, general partner, Trinity Ventures
23	Janice Roberts, managing partner, Mayfield
24	Jaron Lanier, computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author
25	Jerry Brown, Mayor of Oakland California, former Governor of California
26	Jim Plummer, Dean, School of Engineering, Stanford University
27	Joe Kraus, founder and CEO, JotSpot
28	Joe Schoendorf, partner, Accel Partners
29	Joe Schoendorf, partner, Accel Partners
30	John Hartnett, SVP Marketing, Palm One
31	Jonathan Medved, general partner, Israel Seed Fund
32	Jonathan Schwartz, president & COO, Sun Microsystem
33	Jordan Greenhall, founder and CEO, DivX
34	Julie Levenson, head of Private Equity and PIPEs Placement, Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin
35	Keynote: Jonathan Schwartz, president & COO, Sun Microsystems
36	Keynote: Niklas Zennström, CEO, Skype
37	Kim Polese, CEO, SpikeSource
38	Mark Cuban, owner, Dallas Mavericks
39	Mark Cuban, owner, Dallas Mavericks
40	Mark Fletcher, vice president & general manager, Bloglines at Ask Jeeves
41	Mark Heesen, president, NVCA
42	Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL
43	Michael Markman
44	Michael Medved, nationally syndicated radio talk show host, best-selling author, and veteran film critic
45	Michael Moe, CEO, ThinkEquity Partners LLC
46	Michael Moe, CEO, ThinkEquity Partners LLC
47	Michael Weiss, CEO, Streamcast Networks
48	Mike Homer, founder and Chairman, Kontiki and the Open Media Network
49	Mike Homer, founder and Chairman, Kontiki and the Open Media Network
50	Ned Desmond, executive editor, Time Inc Interactive
51	Packy Kelly, Partner, KPMG
52	Peter Hirshberg
53	Rahul Kapoor, partner, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
54	Rich Karlgaard, Publisher, Forbes
55	Rod Smith, VP Emerging Technologies, IBM
56	Ross Mayfield, CEO, SocialText
57	Sandy Berger, former White House National Security Advisor
58	Sandy Berger, former White House National Security Advisor
59	Stephen Elop, CEO, Macromedia
60	Susan Ayers-Walker, Chairman, MIT/Stanford Venture Lab
61	Tim Draper, managing partner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
62	Tom Byers, professor, Stanford University
63	Toni Schneider, VP, Yahoo Developer Network, Yahoo!
64	Tony Perkins, Editor, AlwaysOn
65	Tony Perkins, founder & editor
66	Trip Hawkins, founder and CEO, Digital Chocolate
67	Moderator: Allen Delattre, Partner, Accenture
68	Moderator: Andy Kessler, CEO, Velocity Media
69	Moderator: Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch
70	Moderator: David Scott Lewis, CEO, IT E-Strategies
71	Moderator: Eric Janszen, President & CEO, AutoCell
72	Moderator: Kenneth Wilcox, President and CEO/SVB Financial Group and Silicon Valley Bank
73	Moderator: Louise Kehoe, media consultant and former journalist, Financial Times
74	Moderator: Marc Canter, founder and CEO, Broadband Mechanics
75	Moderator: Morgan McLintic, vice president, LEWIS Global Public Relations
76	Moderator: Paul Saffo, Research Director, Institute for the Future
77	Moderator: Ray Lane, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
78	Moderator: Roger McNamee, founder, managing partner, Elevation Partners
79	Moderator: Steve Jurvetson, managing partner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
80	Moderator: Tom Byers, professor, Stanford University
81	Moderator: Tony Perkins, AlwaysOn
82	Moderator: Tony Perkins, AlwaysOn
83	Moderator: Tony Perkins, founder & editor, AlwaysOn

BlogHer session: "Suffragette Journalists - Oped Pages of Our Own"

Cross-posted on www.BlogHer.org:

Note - Your BlogHer schedule includes a journalism double-feature:

Session I, 2:30 p.m. - "Suffragette Journalists - Oped pages of our own" (below), featuring Anastasia Goodstein, Chris Nolan and Evelyn Rodriguez.

Session II, 3:30 p.m. - "brownbloggers.com goes west," where Nichelle Stephens and Liza Sabater will lead the discussion, "How can African American and Latino bloggers report on issues ignored by the 6 o'clock news?"

-------

Have you surfed the BlogHerRoll in the left-hand margin of this page? My own addicted, late-night clicking has taught me that BlogHers are women with book deals, who write for newspapers and magazines as noted columnists, who shoot TV shows based on their bestsellers, who are decorated television journalists and all-around media industry strategists.

And that's the short list. Turns out that dozens of us attending BlogHer on July 30 are blogging our professional lives as writers. Whether we are trained journalists or published authors or industry specialists who write for our living, many of us are using blogs to break news and deliver information and data.

As the moderator of Session I: Suffragette Journalists, one of the questions I'm interested in is: Why? Why are so many accomplished women writers gilding their professional lilies via blogs? It's not like we aren't broadcasting in every other medium (because the women I linked above have and are and/or could again anytime). Is it the money? The creative freedom? The resume-building? The appetites of readers, who are demanding more transparency and participation as they race from traditional media to the Internet? What does blogging offer women that newsrooms, publishers and the airwaves do not? (Or have I missed the boat with this line of questioning?)

The first set of question begets the second: What does blogging success look like to you as a writer? Dialogue with readers only? A job? Or am I thinking too small - are blogs the breakthrough technology that will help women shatter writerly glass ceilings, allowing women to infiltrate the op-ed pages of leading newspapers, among other opportunities? Do you (not) care? Or is the real story here independence for women writers, that blogs will allow us to develop professional lives as writers with enough flexibility that we can have other interests, too? How can we help each other do that? ...the discussion continues below...

Newsflash: Men still invited to BlogHer!!

Also cross-posted on BlogHer.org:

A huge tip of the hat to Chris Nolan and Robert Scoble, two incredibly popular bloggers who took time this week to explode the urban myth that men are not invited to BlogHer. Update: A tip-of-the-hat also to Dan Gillmor.

Chris tackled the issue with her usual inimitable style -- here's an excerpt from her post, "Dear, Dear Kevin":

"This gives me a wonderful chance to state the obvious about this conference: IT IS NOT FOR WOMEN ONLY. Not only are men welcome -- a statement that it seems absurd to have to make - but some are planning to attend. So you will have company, Kevin.

"This gives me the chance to make another observation: If you are a man who likes code and software and things that plug in, and is perhaps having trouble finding a girl who likes Java (and knows it's not just a coffee) and undersands your inner Geek, this might be the PERFECT place for you to spend a summer afternoon."

Kevin who, you ask? Why, Kevin Drum, the Washington Monthly columnist whose Feb. 20 column posing the question, "why are op-ed pages so completely dominated by men?" provided one of the many outlets women and men really needed to get their gender-related ya-yas out over the nation's op-ed pages. Today, Drum initially wondered whether to accept a press pass to BlogHer, which our PR guru and advisor Renee Blodgett extended last week. "Should I put on my flak jacket and go?" Drum asked. Looks like he got all the feedback he needed to accept our invite:

"UPDATE: My mother says I should go. Chris Nolan says I should go. Good enough for me! But I'm flying up the night before...."

My favorite part of Nolan's comment on Drum's site, which she includes in this post, is this sentence:

"And I think you'll be very surprised to see that this is NOT a convention about "why it's unfair that men run the world." Nor is it a "sisterhood-only event." It's for EVERYONE."

Amen.

Bloghercon, Blogher, Women, Blogs, Media,

Why BlogHer?

I'm asked this question all the time -- as are my co-founders Elisa Camahort and Jory Des Jardins. Here's how I answer, courtesy of two articles:

1. "Women's Wisdom: An Interview with BlogHer's Lisa Stone," New West Network, a Q&A with Managing Editor Courtney Lowery

2. "Why Blogher?" an article I wrote for New Communications Blogzine, edited by Jennifer McClure

Will Judith Miller watch from jail as Robert Novak's book climbs the charts?

The answer to this question is partially up to you.

Here's what I'm on about: Jay Rosen has written a superb post, "Time for Robert Novak to Feel Some Chill," that:

1. I strongly recommend, and
2. reminds me that I've neglected to update Surfette with my own posts on the jailing of New York Times Writer Judith Miller. Here they are, from the daily blog I write on Law.com, Inside Opinions: Legal Blog Watch:

• NYT Report: Judith Miller to be jailed
• Who's the real anti-hero here: Miller? Novak? Judge Fitzgerald?
• Want to know reporters' privilege in every state and federal circuit?

Now, back to Rosen's post and Novak's profits, including many, likely, pending book deals. This is a scenario where I think journalists who use blogging technology (whether you call yourselves citizen journalists or bloggers or live-journalists or diarists) can help traditional journalists. Why not take Rosen's advice and urge media outlets to do the right thing by Novak--here's Jay:

"As the judge said Judy Miller can escape her jail cell by finally choosing to talk, so could Novak restore his column and TV appearances by finally talking about his part in the story. Novak is said to have lots of friends in the press. Friends would let him know the time is here.

"That means if you're a Washington columnist maybe you don't go on CNN with him-- until he explains. If you're a newspaper editor you consider suspending his column until he explains. If you're Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/US, you take him off the air until he decides to go on the air and explain. If you're John Barron, editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, you suspend your columnist (with pay, I should think); and if Barron won't do it then publisher John Cruickshank should.

"If Novak says he can't talk until the case is over, then he shouldn't be allowed to publish or opine on the air until the case is over. He should know the rage some of his colleagues feel. Claiming to be "baffled" by Novak's behavior may have been plausible for a while. With Miller now sitting in jail, and possibly facing criminal charges later, "baffled" is sounding lame." Read the whole thing

Once you've read Rosen right down through the comments, I'd love some help with this question: Where do Time magazine editors and Matthew Cooper stand in your estimation? Is Norm Pattis right to recommend a boycott of Time? He writes, "Judith Miller and The New York Times have taken a firm stand on principle; the same cannot be said of Time Magazine, my subscription to which, I am happy to report, will be cancelled today."

I'm firm on Novak. But I'm still making up my mind on Cooper and Time.

Tags: judith miller, matt cooper

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor resigns

Updates as of 7.05.05 from my posts on Law.com's Inside Opinions legal blog watch:

• All Sandra all the time: Yeah, nice fireworks -- now about the Supremes?
• Supreme Surfing Guide
• One solo woman's salute to another: Elefant on O'Connor
• How to find out what b(law)ggers are saying about O'Connor retirement
• PDF of Justice O'Connor's resignation letter
• Bush statement about O'Connor resignation

The first woman to serve on America's highest court has just rocked the political world. The Washington Post has this lede:

"Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman Supreme Court justice and a decisive swing vote for a quarter-century on virtually all the major legal issues of our time, announced her resignation today.

"Because she is a moderate, her departure gives President Bush a major opportunity to alter the direction of the court if he so chooses..."

Request: As you blog about this--all political stripes welcome--please trackback here. We need to read each other on this one. Anything you can find.

Hat-tip: Bitch Ph. D. Thanks for the email. Here's what Dr. Bitch has to say:

"I predict the death of Roe V. Wade. Sandra Day O'Connor just announced her retirement. And Rehnquist is dying. There goes our 5-4 lead..."