Surfette

My last day at Law.com or Lisa walks her talk

Cross-posted from Legal Blog Watch:

I think this legal blogging thing might catch on -- how about you?

So I've made a decision to hand over the reins of my Law.com blog, Legal Blog Watch, to two brilliant blawggers: Carolyn Elefant and Robert Ambrogi. I'm resigning to work full-time on this little project.

More on that in a minute. First I want to say a few words about Law.com's blogging experiment to date. On Nov. 19, 2004, after three months of working with my old friends, Editorial Director Jennifer Collins and VP Stacey Artandi, I recruited most of the bloggers you see in the blogroll on Legal Blog Watch, plus The Volokh Conspiracy and Matt Homann, and launched.

The blog hit the Internet about the same time a few of my mainstream media colleagues had worked their panties into a serious wad over blogs.  (Let's just say we took the plunge waaaaaay before The Wall Street Journal 's law blog was a line-item in anyone's projected editorial budget.) I rolled my eyes in response. "Why blogs?" I snarked. "Didn't ALM get the memo? And why should you carve out precious billable minutes to read blogs?"

Why indeed. Turns out that we were right: Legal bloggers really are on to something editorially exceptional. In the past 15 months, Law.com blog affiliates have earned awards, recognition of their peers, new writing gigs and new billable hours, too. Meanwhile, the Law.com blog network has driven hundreds of thousands of page views and thousands in revenue.  No, we haven't bought anyone a new car. But we haven't pulled the plug, embarrassed ourselves or fronted a cost-center either.  Just ask BusinessWeek and BtoB.

I'm no attorney, but I've known all along why I was here: As a journalist and a media strategist, I considered the Law.com Blog Network an important next step in sponsored journalism. Why? Because of the role bloggers were already playing in providing news, information and cutting-edge analysis, as I wrote here on Surfette. In other words, legal journalism could be enhanced by having the same people who argue in front of the Supreme Court and advocate for civil rights and settle corporate cases and build solo practices share their experiences here at one of America's leading legal presses.

Rocket science? No. Brave? Yes.  Courage is the other reason I joined the effort. ALM and Law.com got it journalistically: Bill, Stacey and Jennifer were willing to affiliate with blogs in a way that preserved the bloggers' editorial integrity.

What I didn't anticipate was how much enjoyment I'd get out my place in this courtside catbird seat, watching the legal blogosphere explode as some of the best new voices in media -- blawggers -- took on everything from wiretapping, medical marijuana and Harriet Miers to the bugaboos of legal practice management and the grind of everyday criminal defense and sentencing. I have had terrific colleagues on this trip: Every single blogger you see in the blogroll on this page. Even when we agree to disagree, they are great bunch of brains and friends. I need to reserve special thanks for Scott Martin, the ALM editor who suffered through my blog every day and who is responsible for the Law.com home page. Beware, Scott: Your fabulously snappy writing is going to keep you sucked into this project, if I know Jennifer!

I'm particularly gratified to be handing over the reins of my Legal Blog Watch baby to Carolyn and Bob, whose exceptional writing is known to many of you. I can hardly wait to watch the Web's leading solo blawgger, Elefant, mix it up with the blogosphere's ultimate blend of journalist and lawyer, Ambrogi. That tension should lead to some fun repartee about the future of lawyering and the law. But they won't be alone: Law.com has some exciting things planned for this spring, so stay tuned.

You can find me here and at BlogHer, another little experiment I launched a year ago with Elisa Camahort and Jory Des Jardins: A conference for women who blog. BlogHer Con '05 was made possible by four landmark sponsors: Google, Yahoo, Omidyar and Law.com. Since then, BlogHer has ballooned into a media network: On January 30, 2006, we beta-launched a site where 60+ editors write about what's hot on blogs by women across 20+ popular topics. On July 28-29, BlogHer will hold a second annual conference with national press and sponsors for an estimated 750 women bloggers.

I'm excited. You're invited.

Stay tuned.

Happy Birthday BlogHer

Never underestimate the power of women having coffee.

One year ago today, Elisa Camahort and I finally met at a cafe in Palo Alto. And thank goodness we did. I’d been mulling the idea of a conference for women bloggers, discussing it at home, but I wasn’t sure it would fly. I thought the idea required a consortium, a team, a posse -- not one woman -- for even a road test.

The second Elisa and I started swapping stories about blogging, I thought, “YES! This is what I’ve needed—good advice and feedback from a great woman.” I invited Elisa to join me and, thank goodness, she loved the idea. Soon after, she met the amazing Jory Des Jardins, and Jory became our third co-founder. 

We blogged it.

BlogHer Beta Update 1

“BlogHer’s like a fairy godmother mafia...Check out the bajillion blogs written by women and organized by topic.” – Jarah Euston

"The new BlogHer site is up. Looks impressive. It's hard to imagine how this won't end up being a force online.” – Will Femia, MSNBC.com

I should really call this post “Drinking from the firehose: Week 1.” Keeping up with you all has been a challenge! In the past week, this community:

1. Launched

2. Grew to 556 new members

3. Contributed 1,295 new blogs to the BlogHer Blogrolls

4. Published 586 posts of superb quality by these fantastic editors

5. Talked—plenty. We’ve made 709 comments so far (not including email)

6. Scrambled to lighten the load on our database

7. Collected everyone’s feedback on how to improve on the Blogher Beta. And we’re far from done…

Detail--------------------

I’ve helped launch blog networks before; as have Jory (here), and Elisa (here and here). But those projects allowed for sleep and meals. Not BlogHer. Here's some detail:

1. Launch
I'm like a broken record, but I must say it again: pingvision developer Laura Scott has been an absolute dream. She’s responsive, strategic, and up before I am. Dreamy.

2. Grew to 556 new members Welcome! Your rapid growth inspired us to create new ways to find other BlogHer members:

• BlogHer Members directory, where the newest members show up first (look in the upper left-hand corner of the page for this link)
• Introduce yourself! While comments are more popular so far, we opened this forum as an extra invitation to join in.

3. Contributed 1,295 new blogs to the BlogHer Blogrolls This is the job that hurts so good -- the task of making sure that BlogHer does not morph into SpamHer requires that Elisa, Jory and I confirm that each blog recommended to the BlogHer Blogrolls matches our checklist. The lion’s share do fit the bill– but there are are a lot of them! So we’re at work on a few options for improvement, including naming a couple of blogroll editors from among our volunteers. Stay tuned. And stay up to date on the latest additions, including the homepage feature that shows the ten blogs most recently added to the network.

4. and 5. Published 586 posts of superb quality by these fantastic editors and elicited 709 comments. Amazing writing, people, in your comments and original posts. You've broken news and improved coverage in the past week on this site. I'll be writing more on this topic...

6 and 7. We’ve experienced a few SQL glitches as we work to sand all corners on this site. Laura continues to work to reduce how hard we hit the database during peak load hours. The other biggest glitch of the week is, unsurpringly, a human error committed by me – I asked Laura to map my Lisa@blogher.org address to an email address I rarely use. (I knew those sudafed and Robitussin cocktails would get me into trouble.) My apologies - I owe a number of folks an email! Once I'm caught up, we’ll begin thinking about some of the other burning issues you've raised in your comments about the site and how to improve it.

Thank you again for all your time and interest.

Note: I've closed comments in order to encourage feedback on BlogHer here:

Beyond "sorry": Cindy Sheehan, Beverly Young and your closet

Look in your closet: Do you need a lawyer?

Last night, Capitol Hill police delivered an "oops-sorry!" to two women who were bounced from President Bush's state of the union address for wearing t-shirts with political messages. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer told reporters that "Neither guest should have been confronted about the expressive T-shirts." (For more details, read The AP here.)

The shock of  watching and reading how anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was cuffed and charged, and how Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee who wore a support-our-troops tee, was ejected from the gallery has created common ground in the blogosphere. As Capt. Ed puts it so beautifully in "The Right to Bare Arms" (hat-tip Rhymes with Right):

"Since when have we become so fragile that the wearing of a protest t-shirt become so unsettling? Both women should have reconsidered their wardrobe for the speech. However, a fashion crime should not equate to police action, and arresting someone for wearing a dumb t-shirt should not happen in America."

Lauren Gelman doesn't cop to the worst-dressed bit, but otherwise wholeheartedly agrees: "In President Bush’s State of the Union he urged citizen’s to support his efforts to promote democracy overseas. But what about democracy at home? There were two people kicked out of the State of the Union adress because of the tee-shirt they were wearing. Pause. Can you believe this is the “democracy” we are living in..." Michael Cernovich makes it clear he "loathes" Sheehan but is horrified by her treatment and has built quite a legal case for how her rights were violated.

Make that her, Young and many others. This kind of incident has been happening all over the United States. Remember these stories?