Saturday, December 20, 2008

Burgh mourns the loss of the "Burgher"

Is it a coincidence that the anonymous bloggers such as pittgirl and the burgher have been forced into retirement? Is there that much stress being an anonymous blogger?

The bloggers out there that are known such as Bram, and Matt H have survived... Is it because they are "OUT" ? I have never done an inventory of the blogs in the burghosphere and categorized those which the authors are known and which are anonymous? Then we have the media types such as Delano, McYapper, ect.
Speaking of the MSM type, I would really enjoy life if a couple of people started blogs. Like Dicky Scaiffe. He enjoys plastering his political views all over the Trib Review, I would like to have the opportunity to post my opinions and debate him on his views. On the other side of the news media, I would like to interact with Rich Lord. No offense Mr. Lord, I am not comparing you to Dicky!

It's funny. Here in the burgh we are such a small town. There is no doubt in my mind that I have been in the same room as the Burgher and probably walked down the street and seen alot of the anons who post in the burghosphere.

I have asked myself if I am crazy for starting a blog. It's alot of work to keep one up. I see the bloggers out there who do a good job and those that don't. I remember clicking on to the burgh report, only to be disappointed that there were no new posts. NOW it is gone. UGH. But then the Burgh Report wasn't just a blog. It was a collection of people, a gathering place, a place to debate, throw cyber stones, and gossip. Burgher... Why not just STOP posting and pass the Burgh Report onto someone who wanted to continue your success?

4 comments:

EdHeath said...

I found that when I poster everyday or nearly everyday, I doubled the traffic at my blog. Not that it got very high, since it started low to begin with. This was during the Mayoral race of '07, and I was trying to post on relevant topics. But that is a lot of work, and mostly I like commenting on other peoples blogs. But my take on blogging is that it is a lot of work (I like to compose in Word, for example), not as good for you as running, and bloggers seems to drop out for different reasons. Consider Chad Hermann and Jonathan Potts. Both well respected; in Chad's case apparently you either really liked him or (as in my case) you didn't, while my impression was that Jonathon was thoughtful but managed to annoy many fewer people. Both were out, both dropped out.

The fact that blogging is kinda hard work means that a lot of celebrities wouldn't do it, and those that did try to probably wouldn't do a very good job. It helps not to have a life.

I don't know why the Burgher didn't just pass the Burgh Report on to Chris and/or Bram, if only to give the traffic a place to go. I can kind of see deciding to shut down, though, since it was *his* blog. But there is also the endless speculation about perhaps being about to be "outed" too.

EdHeath said...

PS the commenting set up here gave me trouble. I chose to comment using a Google account. Hitting post took me to word verification (which I did) then it said I couldn't comment. I tried preview next, it went to a screen asking me for my email and password for my Google (blogger) account, then hitting post worked.

Schultz said...

I'm still bugging The Burgher about letting me post the archives of The Burgh Report to a new blogspot domain. While I will not quit my other two blogs (Green is Good and technology + politics) I am thinking about taking some of the anti-luke activism offline and to the masses. The burghosphere alone cannot and will not defeat Luke and the Democratic machine here in Pittsburgh. Stay tuned.

Bram Reichbaum said...

Offhand, I think the ADB is the only anonymous blogger left. I think the stress of anonymity surely has something to do with burning out -- I don't know what I would do if I couldn't discuss my day's writing here and there with friends.

I don't think he passed it on because it was getting comparably lame without him -- and the anonymity behind such a dominant site gave the whole political Internet a bit of a seedy vibe. Is my guess.