The London MetBlog saga grows ever more entertaining. I logged into my Bloglines account this morning, to find a post on there from Heppy decrying the abrupt sacking of OnionBagBlogger from the site for satirising the Princess of Wales memorial. I clicked through to the original article, and found it gone. Wow. For a "non-edited" blog, there's a heavy hand of censorship at work.
Anyway, you can find the original post at Heppy's blog, you can find OnionBagBlogger's account of his sacking on his blog, and Inspector Sands rounds up his opinion on the whole thing here.
With all the good writers gone from the Metblogs site, I still say a good, multi-author London blog would be an excellent idea. Anyone interested?
It's clunky, partisan, grey and slow, but I love *my* London Blog.
I would be, although it could be a tough act to pull off.
I notice Sean Bonner has gone to ground, other than make a few childish observations.
There's nothing to say. I have no interest in repeating my self time and time again to deaf ears. As I've pointed out several times now, including on Heppys blog, Onion wasn't kicked off because of anything he said. I'm an American, I barely know who Princess Diana is, and hardly care if she was annorexic or a massive fat ass. I didn't even get the reference until after the fact. He was kicked off because he was being a dick to me. It's my site, and there's no reason I need to let someone who is being a prick to me on it. Lots of people were begging me to kick him off for weeks, I keep trying to give him the benefit of the doubt but when he stopped responding to my e-mails, and doing things (cross posting) that I asked him not to I kicked him off. I've made that clear before and you guys just keep yelling censorship, so what is the point of me even talking to you? If you don't belive a word I say, what's the use?
The three or four of you have said your piece and how out of my head you think I am, etc etc etc. Luckily, from reactions of all the other cities, and most other blogs, no one agrees with you, so what is the point of dragging this out? If you want to copy me and start your own site do it. Good luck. If you don't, don't. But if you want to just keep repeating lies and expect me to answer to them you are going to be disappointed. I've got some 20 other cities I'm working on launching right now, the London problem is over as far as I'm concered.
Hey, Sean, thanks for dropping by. If you happen to swing by again, perhaps you could answer a couple of questions that have been intriguing me:
1. Is Metroblogging a commercial venture?
2. Are you paying your contributors?
As a working journalist, these things intrigue me....
Absolutely.
1. Yes and No. It's a commercial venture in that we would *like* it to make money at some point down the line, and no in that it isn't even covering it's own bills right now. Jason D and I who run it both make out living from other things and metblogs hasn't made enough to buy us a single cup of coffee yet.
2. No. As you noted in other posts this might change, but currentlyly with 10 or so contributors in every city, and cities being added every day, and the money coming in not even covering the bills, there's nothing left of the pie to devide up. We are looking into several ways to change that income situation, and once it begins to cover more than the bills we will actively look into what is the best way to pay people. Every city has a point person that helps us keep things moving, and helps with administration in ways most of the bloggers don't. These people will probably be the first ones to get anything out of it.