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domingo, outubro 15, 2006

 
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115698487629850100.html?mod=technorati

No Day at the Beach
Bloggers Struggle With What to Do About Vacation
By ELIZABETH HOLMES
August 31, 2006; Page B1

A banner stripped across the top of the Daily Dish declares that the
popular Web log's host, Andrew Sullivan, has "gone fishing." Mr.
Sullivan declared a two-week vacation and opted to leave his political
blog behind.

Several thousand of his readers have done the same.

Despite the efforts of three verbose guest bloggers, replacements
handpicked by Mr. Sullivan, the site's visitor tally has fallen. The
Daily Dish, now part of Time magazine, usually garners around 90,000
unique visitors, or individual readers, each day. At the start of the
first workweek without him, Mr. Sullivan's blog received about 67,000
hits, according to Site Meter. This week, traffic has hovered around
57,000.

"The frequency of emails of 'Bring back Andrew' and 'This is stupid.
Bring back Andrew' is definitely higher than anything I've ever
written," says David Weigel, a 24-year-old assistant editor at Reason
magazine, who is one of Mr. Sullivan's guest bloggers and has filled
in at other sites in the past.

In the height of summer-holiday season, bloggers face the inevitable
question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a
decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others
keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families.
Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few
days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone
blog-sit.
[Summertime Blues]

To be sure, most bloggers don't agonize over this decision. Of the 12
million bloggers on the Internet, only about 13% post daily, according
to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Even fewer -- 10% --
spend 10 or more hours a week on their blogs.

Yet for the sliver of people whose livelihood depends on the blog --
whether they are conservative, liberal or don't care -- stepping away
from the keyboard can be difficult. Unlike other jobs, where
co-workers can fill in for an absent employee, blogs are usually a
one-person show. A blogger's personality carries the site. When the
host isn't there, readers tend to stray. August is a slow time for all
blogs, but having an absent host makes the problem worse. Lose enough
readers, and advertisers are sure to join the exodus.

It's something that John Amato, host of the political blog Crooks and
Liars, knows all too well. Mr. Amato rarely steps away from his site
for any significant amount of time, although he finds updating the
page multiple times a day exhausting.

"You become your blog," says Mr. Amato, whose site gets an average of
150,000 hits a day. "It's John Amato. They're used to John Amato."

Some bloggers thrive on the manic pace. Getaways for Jim Romenesko,
host of the popular media blog bearing his name, consist of a Friday
afternoon drive every month or so from his home in the Chicago suburbs
to visit friends in Milwaukee. The 85-mile trip should last around 90
minutes. For Mr. Romenesko, it takes nearly four hours -- because he
stops at eight different Starbucks on the way to update his site.

The longest Mr. Romenesko has refrained from posting on his site,
which gets about 70,000 hits a day, was for one week three years ago
on the insistence of site owner, the Poynter Institute. He hasn't
taken a vacation in seven years. "The column's called Romenesko," he
says. "I just feel it should be Romenesko" who writes it.

While it may seem like a chore to outsiders, many bloggers enjoy the
compulsion. Mark Lisanti, who runs the entertainment gossip blog
Defamer, is much like Mr. Romenesko in his no-vacation tendencies.
Although he gets three weeks off each year from Gawker Media, which
owns the site, he rarely takes a day. Not because he can't, he just
doesn't want to. "My plan is to die face down on the desk in the
middle of a post," Mr. Lisanti jokes.

Jeff Jarvis, author of the political blog BuzzMachine, knows the
feeling. He has always posted during his annual vacation to Skytop
Lodge in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. When the resort had
only an expensive Internet connection, he paid the hefty fee to keep
his blog current. His son, Jake, now 14 years old, paid for half of
the connection costs so he could keep up his technology blog, Wire
Catcher.

Mr. Jarvis says he can count the number of days he's spent away from
his blog on one hand. On the occasional break -- for a day or less --
he opts to leave his blog "dark," or untouched, rather than have
someone fill in for him. "It's just my space," he says.

Kevin Drum, author of Washington Monthly's blog Political Animal, says
he used to have that kind of proprietary attitude. At some point, Mr.
Drum says, "You just have to let go."

Stepping away often means accepting a decline in readership. While Mr.
Drum was on vacation for two days last week, his site averaged 45,000
hits, about 10,000 fewer than the previous weeks, according to Site
Meter.

Mr. Drum turned to guest bloggers. Choosing temporary replacements is
a great way to expose your audience to new voices, says Lauren Gelman,
associate director of Stanford University Law School's Center for
Internet and Society and a sometimes guest blogger at legal sites.

But, as in Mr. Weigel's case at the Daily Dish, it's not easy. Much
like a guest host on a late-night talk show, people have specific
expectations for a proven brand. A new contributor needs to maintain
the tone of the site and not alienate its readers.

At the same time, the guest blogger can't follow a script or act like
a substitute teacher who regurgitates the lesson, says Ms. Gelman.
Without some creativity or flavor from the new writer, postings sound
stale. "Not all voices are created equal," notes Aaron Adams, an
information technology consultant from Missouri who reads nearly 20
blogs a day. "Some guest bloggers don't do much more than just keep
the light on. They're not as interesting or as stimulating."

Michelle Malkin, host and namesake of a political blog, recruited
guest writers carefully when she decided to take her first vacation in
several years. All four replacements had a "similar vibe" to her own,
says Ms. Malkin. Two of the guest bloggers were well-versed in
subjects popular in the news at the time and the other two were
friends whose work she admired.

A slice of Ms. Malkin's audience didn't take to the guest bloggers.
She chalked that up to a "fickle" bunch who prefer her work as a
syndicated columnist. But overall the guest bloggers held readers'
attentions, says Ms. Malkin. During the week she was gone, hits
averaged around 140,000 a day, down from about 200,000 before she went
on vacation. Last week, before she eased back into posting, her
average daily visitor tally dipped below 120,000. The numbers didn't
faze Ms. Malkin. "For the dog days of August, they did tremendously
well," she says of her fill-ins.

Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee,
experienced a similar blow this month when he took a weeklong break
from his site, the popular political blog InstaPundit. Unique visitors
fell to 115,000 from around 150,000, according to Site Meter.

Even so, Mr. Reynolds is glad he took the week off. "I need a vacation
more than I care about the traffic," he says.