Interview with Eric Berlin, Blogcritics Executive Producer - Page 2

It's a little strange being that "naked" before the world sometimes, but that's a decision all writers must make.

My "real" job is producing websites for a company in Los Angeles. I do try to keep the two roles separate to an extent, though you can of course infer that there's tremendous crossover in terms of what I have the privilege of learning and experiencing each day.

Blogcritics is a passion and a job that has to fit into the cracks of my regular life, but that's something that millions of fellow bloggers out there are also contending with. It's a balance thing. Relatively few can pull a full-time wage from blogging so it's an activity born of passion and devotion and even obsession for most!

Volunteerism

Fred Turner, a professor at Stanford, recently published a book called 'Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism'. What impresses me about BC is this volunteerism. You do a full time job and still take time to volunteer.

I think that people — including the 1,700 "writer-bloggers" of blogcritics, our passionate readers and commenters, our most involved site users, and most of all our hardworking and dedicated and monumentally talented editorial staff members (which includes many of the site's best writers!) — put in so much effort because they are passionate about the site and our community and want to see it grow and prosper and do well.

That's certainly what drove me and what still makes me eager to get up in the morning, flip on the computer (it's usually on all night, actually!) and see what's happened since my last visit.

By the way, I am now one of the three co-owners of Blogcritics.org so my position is no longer strictly a volunteer position.

I suppose you are alluding to the fact that the success of BC and the volunteerism that we see on it is due to its symbiotic nature.

Yes, BC is symbiotic — I like to use the somewhat cheesy term "people power" — Blogcritics is a grassroots success story (we've never had a dime of investment) literally powered by its membership.

So our "sinister cabal of superior writers" help one another to succeed, producing stories and work that is good and beneficial to the Internet community.

Commenting

BC has an open commenting policy and an open attitude towards accepting new writers. I am sure there must have been plenty of behind the scenes discussions about it. Tell me a little about the process of deciding about policies around BC.

Article Author: Spincycle

Spincycle is interested in questions around media, governance, and political economy. He strongly values reading good fiction for he feels that it imparts the important value of empathy.

Visit Spincycle's author page — Spincycle's Blog