"Rules of a good political blog post" (from "Dime a Dozen" blog)

[zonkers]

http://rjjago.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/rules-of-a-good-political-blog-post/


1. If you have spent more than an hour researching it, it’s dear to your heart and has been so carefully referenced that it would make a good master’s thesis proposal - no one will read it. Posts can be as long as you want, but if you can’t summarize the whole thing in a sentence - then it’s hard for other bloggers to link to it.

2. Don’t use language so politicized that only you, your best friend Garth, and a couple of the guys on alt.freakpolitics know what your saying. The following phrases make you look like Tom Cruise: ‘Shrub’, ‘moonbat’, ‘Paulnauts’, ‘Faux news’, you want more? Troll through the Google groups or the shallow end of any big blogroll. If people can’t understand your post, people can’t link to it.

3. If there is not a clear A - B relationship, it is not an interesting scandal. If politician A spoke at University B and that university bans interracial dating - that’s interesting. If politician A gave $100 to a newsletter that wrote favourably of that same University B - that’s not at all interesting.

4. Don’t swear or use sexist language. If you use the word ‘broad’ in a post, and you’re not describing geography, or knowledge, then you’ve lost most of your audience. Think of it this way - if you’re at any social gathering and there’s an opinionated guy siting in a corner yelling about ‘fucking commie broads’ or ‘mother fucking chimpy mchitlerburton and his nazi war machine’, would you:

A. Gather around him and soak up the wisdom

B. Shout ‘Fuckin A’ from across the room

C. Get as far away from him as possible

5. Don’t play to your commenters. When you start a blog, your first few repeat commenters are going to be really exciting and you’re going to want to go out of your way to please them. But don’t. It’s a feedback loop that’s going to pull you further and further to the extremes. you don’t want to spend your valuable time writing a post in order to get ‘BIGLVR317′ to leave a comment like: “Right on! Give it to ‘em!”.

6. Write about the real world. If you live in Tuktoyaktuk or Palookaville or another backwater like Vancouver, you’re not going to have a lot of insight into Pakistani tribal politics and you won’t find many people linking to you to hear what you’ve got to say about the recent election in Kenya. Try writing about your country’s politics, pull something out of the local paper and go crazy with it, find an idiot town councillor and humiliate them on line. Write about something that you have some real world contact with. This is something I need to do much more of.

7. If you must write about Pakistani or Kenyan politics, then find a blogger there and interview him or her. It’s fresh, original content, and not just you shouting at the newspaper. Bloggers have big egos and love the attention. Think about it - some blogger from France emails you to get your take on your country’s politics - would you write back? Of course you would.

8. Stay away from Photoshop. Don’t spend more time photoshopping an image for your post, than you spend actually writing it. Most people suck at graphic design - that probably includes you. Your nifty picture of the president sitting on a toilet eating a baby? It’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for you. I don’t care what’s in the post, your dumb picture diminishes it.

These two won’t make your post good - but they’ll make it well read:

9. Once it’s done, promote it. The most consistently effective way is to find someone who disagrees with you and comment on their blog. The next best way is to post on a message board or forum. After that, emailing another blogger and asking for a link and finally using a social bookmarking site like ‘digg’ or ‘fark. If you’re using wordpress.com you’ll need to check out this blog for info on how to add social bookmarks.

10. Finally, if you’re a totally whore for attention and you don’t care how you get it - include the phrase “Ron Paul is a fascist” somewhere in your post. That’ll generate a lot of free traffic. Alternative phrases are: “9-11 Truthers are assholes”, “I love George W Bush”, “Chimpy McHitlerburton”, “Scientology is for idiots”, and “Abortion”.

By the way - I know I’ve broken almost all of these rules on my own blog from time to time .