Say Anything Blog

But not necessarily in the fashion I would have liked.

First, let me toot my own horn a bit. I don't often make a big deal of it, but Say Anything has become a fairly popular political blog. Not as big as some out there, but undoubtedly in the upper ranks and certainly the biggest in North Dakota. Looking at statistics, Say Anything gets more unique visits before 8:00am than most North Dakota blogs get all day. Frankly, in any given hour SA gets more posts than most ND blogs get all day.

Posts on this blog have been featured on MSNBC and CNN as well as quoted in the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, National Review Online, The National Journal, The New York Observer, The New Republic Online and on and on. I've never really kept a list of all the "big-time" media references to content here on Say Anything, but you get the picture. For a blog written by just some guy in North Dakota who enjoys talking politics in his spare time, Say Anything has certainly gotten a fair share of attention. Enough attention, in fact, that certain parties actually pay me for the non-exclusive rights to syndicate my posts (Pajamas Media, most notable among these). It's not a lot of money. I'll never make a living off this stuff, but it's a nice reflection of what I've been able to accomplish with this blog.

A joke I often tell friends and family when they ask me about the blog is that while reporters in New York occasionally see fit to quote me, I'm not sure that journalists in my hometown even know who I am.

Somewhat to my chagrin, that joke came to life recently when one of the television news stations in my hometown revamped their website and decided to include posts from blogs with their traditional content. Posts, as near as I can tell, from just two blogs. One being Say Anything, and the other being the Bismarck Mandan Blog run by SA reader/contributor Clint from (you guessed it) the Bismarck/Mandan area. The station is KXMC, and you can see what they're doing right here.

Now I think that including blog content is a great idea for news websites. I, for one, am flattered that they would consider using SA content for their website, but before they include blog content (at least before they include full posts from blogs) they should get the permission of the actual blog owners. KXMC didn't do that.

In all fairness, I did know that KXMC was planning on doing this. I had emailed their webmaster after seeing a couple of odd referrals coming from a half-finished KXMC template at a test bed URL and was told by him that they were considering including SA posts with their content and that someone would be in touch with me when the new KXMC website went live. Well now the site is live, SA content is posted in full on their website, and nobody has asked me if I'm ok with it. I emailed the webmaster I'd previously been in touch with yesterday and haven't received a response, so today I sent an email directly to KXMC.

I fully expect a friendly "Oops, we're sorry" response and a satisfactory resolution to this, but it kind of made me laugh at what it implies about the attitudes of some traditional media organizations towards bloggers like me. I think many of them still view bloggers as just faceless, anonymous, inconsequential cranks on the internet.

Update: That was quick. Right after I typed this I received the friendly response I expected and we are well on our way to a solution. Apparently they meant to get in touch with me and ask official permission but forgot in the rush to get their new website design online.

I'm looking at all this as just an internet faux pas. It happens. I'm just happy to be getting some attention from local media.