05/15/08 - Google Is Watching You And Me !!!!

People don't realize how much info is collected by Google via Google Anaytics and this can be a little freaked out at that sort of thing.

It is very easy for a new citizen journalist to get drunk on web statistics.

Maybe I should go cold turkey and not report on or look at the web statistics alone for 2 or 3 months.

It is just that when you work so hard on building a website, you become almost addicted to the independent web statistics. If the page views are going up you feel that you must be doing something right.

The blogosphere has taken journalism into uncharted waters

"The rules have changed, man. Deal with it."

I am big supporter of the blogosphere's corrective power.

I don't think that most mainstream reporters have secret agendas. But I do think that they have to work so fast and under such deadline pressure that they often cut corners and make errors of fact or judgement.

And for news consumers to have another set of people, even if they are "uncredentialed", looking over their shoulders has been the greatest thing to happen to journalism since the Vietnam War and Watergate.

Personally I think that journalism in greenwich often amounted to a conspiracy between journalists and politicians against the public. I think that "citizen journalists" are causing the whole cosy arrangement to be in danger of collapse.

And the single family home owners of Greenwich are in danger of finding out what their lords and masters really think of them.

Personally, I find it simply laughable that reporters who have been cheering on whistle-blowers for years have suddenly started to denounced citizen journalists who blow the whistle on sloppy reporting.

Thanks to bloggers, the Greenwich media has found itself faced with a much needed fact checker.

I see poorly conducted journalism by bloggers as far less dangerous to Greenwich society than the local newspaper and radio journalists who routinely toss aside their ethics and responsibility in order not to anger a key source, or violate "politically correct" points of view.

Personally, I am very grateful for the blogosphere that has allowed my own site and creativity to flourish in the short time since it was launched.

However, I received some wise feedback from a reader saying that they didn't think that "it helps your cause" to be tweaking Paul Curtis so directly.

At least we did not put up Google satellite photos up of his backyard at 8 Rex Street In Greenwich

(Opps, I did it again)

No seriously, the reader I mentioned above, doesn't want Greenwich Roundup to "come across as being mean-spirited in anyway".

Further, the reader also made a valid point by saying, "The news is one thing but you don't want it to be so personal."

Lastly, the reader went out of their way to say that they are not trying to kill the "outsider appeal" of Greenwich Roundup but wanted to make sure that the citizens of Greenwich will take the website seriously.

And this reader is 100% right.

Even though I received over a dozen comments about the fantastic growth that Greenwich Roundup has experienced, this one descenting readers comments made me take notice.

Greenwich Roundup obviously wants to be taken seriously despite the anti-establishment themes, and the appearance of the website will start to reflect this fact more so in the future.

The goal here is to make Greenwich Roundup an open source news and information portal for Greenwich. Currently, we are looking to add a Greenwich Wiki where everyone in Greenwich would be able to write, edit and publish information about Greenwich.

Also, Greenwich Roundup is also looking to make this a team blog where several citizen journalists would be able to report on what is really happening in Greenwich.

If you want to be a citizen journalist or regular columnist at Greenwich Roundup, you can use your real name or a pen name.

For example, you could be "Citizen X" and your column could be called the "X Rant". The only thing we ask is that any pen name would be family friendly.

If you have any suggestions on how to make Greenwich Roundup better, please don't hesitate to send in your ideas, because this cub reporter is slowly learning how to blog one day at a time.

Maybe, I shoud have signed up for this class

Neophytes get introduction to blogging

Since, I missed the class. I am going to have to ask you the reader to help me make Greenwich Roundup into a better news blog.

Maybe, you think we should have a smaller more readable type without all of the cantered text.

Or maybe, we should go to two columns instead of three columns.

Please let me know, what you think will make Greenwich Roundup much cleaner and easier to read.

Well this will be the last post tonight, my wife is taking me to a prayer meeting lead by former football player Paul Costa at a house in Rye Brook.

Maybe, I will say the blogger's prayer....

"God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
courage to blog about the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference."

Then I will say....

Hi, my name is Brian, and I am addicted to the statistics at Google Analytics.

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Please send your ideas to GreenwichRoundup@gmail.com