Blogcasting

I see that all the other panelists on last night's blogging show on Yellowstone Public Radio have weighed in with comments already. I do have an excuse. Tuesday night is production night at The Outpost, so I had to go crank out a few pages after the show (and after Pug Mahon's).

We made a noble effort to finish this week's edition before the show but didn't quite make it. So I put the finishing touches on this week's Outpost while under the influence of two pints of Guinesss Stout. Cheers! All libels will be cheerfully retracted.

The show itself was fun, and good, I hope. It's always hard to tell when you are in the middle of it. Good calls, and Ken Siebert was really well prepared. It wasn't as journalism-oriented as I would have preferred, but that's not a criticism. Ken wanted a show that would be of interest to bloggers, potential bloggers and the what-the-heck-are-bloggers crowd, and I think he pulled that off.

One thing that struck me was how different my motives are from the other bloggers on the panel. Maybe I've been writing for a living for too long, but I have trouble even conceiving of writing a blog as a hobby or for personal satisfaction (which is not to say that it doesn't provide elements of both). I'm just so obsessed with figuring out a way to use the blog to help me make a living (and have so little time to devote to it) that it sort of becomes another beast to be fed. That may explain why I'm not better at it.

It certainly would be appealing to toss aside the dead-tree edition of The Outpost and become a full-time online journalist. I could actually do journalism a few hours every day instead of spending most of my time keeping books, delivering papers and holding the fort together.

A pure online Outpost actually was an idea we kicked around one rainy (remember rain?) Sunday afternoon before we started The Outpost in 1997, but we decided it was too early for such a move. When the dot.com bust came, we felt pretty smart. I don't feel so smart anymore.

UPDATE: Fame is so fleeting. My wife called me at the office last night to make sure she knew when the program would be on so she could listen. This morning I asked her, "So how was the show?"

Her reply: "What show?"