Friday Morning with Temple Part 1 of 2 - Page 2

Temple: OK. I signed on because I see value in Blogcritics, where we both participate. My number one goal is to pick reviews and other posts to put up at Advance.net, which I would describe as a portal for a number (10?) of newspapers. I pick what I think is timely and of value to a general audience. If it is written well, that includes things they may not have heard of. I am the music review editor and the television editor.

UPDATE: Temple is now the music editor only and is now also Executive Editor at the blogcritics.org, As the publisher puts, he keeps "a sharp overall eye on our professionalism."

But the secondary part, which should probably be more of a primary part
is to fix grammar and typos and the like. And direct and structure the
writing. I would like to work more with the writers to improve their
writing in some cases but that takes time to explain yourself clearly
and learn about how each person approaches their writing and what they
want out of the experience. I don't have that time - especially for
free.

Justene: Now Polstate.com is a different beast altogether, right?

Temple: Yep. There's no helping their writing :-)

Justene: No no, I meant, the PolState setup and your role there is completely different from the other two blogs, and rather unique in the blogosphere.

Temple: :-) PolState.com, Political State Report, is a place for news on politics from writers in all 50 states. The idea being people who live in Iowa know Iowa better. It's a place (PolState, not Iowa) that seeks to avoid flame wars and keep the anger away; a place where people put their biases up front. (There is a D or an R or an L next to their name.)

If they say they are independent, I make them put I/R or I/D as their political leaning because Independent doesn't really mean anything from the outside reader's perspective. Most people aren't in jobs where announcing their political affiliation is bad - especially on a site like ours where they aren't embarrassing themselves in a rant or a diatribe. In some ways I'm jealous of that ability to put up front their politics, but I chose what I'm doing.
That would be the nutshell. That goal got a little strained in the run up to the general election. However we have a comment policy and if I delete a comment or edit it I explain why. I'm not shy about deleting but I explain why and refer people to the comment policy which is listed at the top of the site. I haven't had to delete anything but spam since the general election, however. We have had a few original interviews, but those are hard - that's actual work and I don't pay
anyone. Therefore interviews are not the focus though it would be great to have more. It bothers me a little that, for the most part, the interviews we do have are Republicans interviewing Republicans and Democrats interviewing Democrats. To me that isn't journalism but approaching Public Relations, especially if done in any organized way.

Article Author: Justene Adamec

Justene practices law in downtown LA. To chat about this or other topics, IM Justene.

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