Welcome the new blog in town: Politics of Plainfield

 

Welcome Plainfield's newest blog, Ken Schuman's Politics of Plainfield (see here).

Ken began his blog a few days before the Board of Ed election last week, and came to my attention through a comment he posted to my report on the preliminary tallies.

We have been in touch by email, and I explained that I would be more than delighted to add him to the daily CLIPS mix if he was committed to 'more or less regular' posting, which he has said he will undertake.

Ken is starting off by taking a close look at issues with the Board of Education and the school district, as he said in an email --

...I am just a plain retired liberal white male with newfound time on my hands and who has become angered by the politics in this city. I will be focusing on several areas of city government. I have started with the BOE that has the largest budget, most scandals, and is failing to do what it is supposed to do which is educate students...

which followed up on his take on the elections --

...[m]any I have spoken with share that the new [Board of Ed] agenda is contracts for lawyers, jobs and promotions for friend, and punishment for enemies.

In his most recent post, this past Friday, Ken reviews the positive impacts Dr. Gallon had in his short tenure, and asks what the hallmarks of successful school reform are.

Ken has an engaging writing style and goes over ground that other may not have covered. Please check out his blog (here) and post your comments and keep the discussion going.

As of today, you can find his blog in the sidebar on Plainfield Today and in the listings on CLIPS. Additionally, I will call out his most recent posts in the 'green paragraph' in the daily CLIPS.

Welcome, Ken!

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• Blog:  "Politics of Plainfield"

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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New blogger joins Plainfield lineup: ke' stans

Welcome Plainfield's newest blogger, Kevin Stansbury (ke' stans), blogging at Through The Lens of An Urban Educator (see here, where you will find two fresh posts already).

ke' stans has a Masters degree in urban education (with honors) and a B.A. in British Literature, cum laude. He is currently the site administrator of the Barack Obama Academy for Academic and Civic Development, located at 1200 Myrtle Avenue (the former Jefferson School).

ke' stans will be devoting his blogging efforts to clarifying the issues facing urban educators and urban school districts, bringing to bear both the insights from his academic background and relevant grounding in his real world education experiences.

Though he will be addressing issues of interest to those in urban education nationwide, local readers will benefit from a close reading both for a discussion of issues and philosophies, and for an opportunity to see how these play out (or can play out) in the Plainfield setting.

ke' stans can be followed on Twitter:  @kestans. He also welcomes comments on the blog (just click on the word 'comments' at the end of a post to open the comments window).

I will include lead-ins to his posts in the CLIPS daily overview.

Though I don't make a habit of counting blogger noses in other communities, I am sure that having ke' stans join the Plainfield lineup keeps us in the vanguard of communities of our size (and we all know that's OVER fifty thousand).

Welcome ke' stans!

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• Blog:  "Through the Lens"
• Plainfield Public Schools:  "Barack Obama Academy"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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OSHA Warning: Plainfield Today is 5, running with pointy stick!

Plainfield Today turned five years old yesterday, while I wasn't watching.

The blog was begun in 2005, while I was the city's public information officer, in a fit of pique over being unable to get the Courier or the Ledger to pick up on a story -- Plainfield's first-ever online auction of short-term notes on Thursday, November 3, 2005 (the first post is here).

First post on Plainfield Today, 11/03/2005.

The auction was successful (the BANs were bought by the investment arm of the Church of the Latter Day Saints), and raised the funds for (among other things) the proposed Senior Center.

Though Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs declined to use the bond issue for construction of the Senior Center -- she had a developer who was 'giving' us the center for $1 -- her Administration recently showed interest in using the money for the gunshot-spotting technology proposal. That item was tabled after the accountants briefed the city on the dire state of its finances.

In that first month alone, I posted 18 items of news and events involving the city of Plainfield.

Sad to say, the record has never been matched by Her Honor's various publicity folks ever since.

To date, I have written 2,487 posts (expect to hit 2,500 this month) for Plainfield Today. At an average of 400 words per post, that is nearly 1,000,000 words spilt about Plainfield.

And there is still plenty of interest to write about; Plainfield is truly a gift that never stops giving.

If you're interested, the graphic below lists the first month's posts -- you can see the variety of 'good news' stories that can be generated by the Administration if it wants to.

NOTE: Neither Bernice nor Mark Spivey were the reporters in question. And ironically, if today's conditions were to apply, Mark would have taken my press release and put it on the Courier's new 'microsite', thereby removing the provocation that got me to blogging in the first place. Much to the regret of those who think it has been regrettable since Day One.

---

• Plainfield Today: "Plainfield offers $11.7M in notes online, a first"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Dan to Renata: I am guilty

Board of Ed member Renata Hernandez maintains a personal blog.

Dan to fellow Plainfield blogger Renata Hernandez: I am guilty, on TWO COUNTS.

• FIRST, of trying to make some sense of your often recondite posts in the same amount of time I devote to each of the other Plainfield blogs in the daily preparation of the CLIPS blog; and
  
  
• SECOND, of trying to craft a 'clickworthy' teaser for your post in my headline to drive traffic toward your blog, assuming you do like to have readers' attention called to it.

The mysterious entry that got Dan in hot water.

 So, what happened?

Landing on your 'Dear Michael' post yesterday, it seemed to be clearly part of an ongoing conversation...giving no clue to your readers exactly WHERE that conversation was taking place. Given my time constraints and the fact that you did not point folks toward that conversation (which it turns out actually can be found here), I had to try and figure out -- QUICKLY -- who 'Michael' was and what blog was being referenced.

Since the topic obviously concerned the Board of Ed, but didn't state DIRECTLY AND CLEARLY whether it was about a SPECIFIC issue with a particular meeting notice or a GENERAL issue with the POLICY of giving public notices, the question became: How much time am I going to spend on this puzzle before moving on?

Answer: Not more than on grasping any other blogger's post.

All I was left with was 'MICHAEL' and 'blog'.

There is another Plainfield blogger, who chooses to be anonymous, but whom many think is a person named MICHAEL. So, I wondered, is Renata referring to this supposed person? Is she carelessly 'outing' the purposely anonymous blogger? Or is it on purpose? Hence my headline teaser.

Turns out it was nothing of the kind, as I learn from reading your Wednesday post in response.

Which led me to Olddoc's post where you got into a back-and-forth and Olddoc asserted his right not to have his blog's comments highjacked (see here) --

Ras, I am not posting your comments in reply to MT since I do n ot feel that it is the function of this blogger to open his blog to a commentary tiff. Your points are appreciated and fortunately you have your well read blog to express them. That perhaps is a better venue than turning a commentary section of a blog into one which we find in the newspapers. (October 26, 2010 9:26 PM)

Each of us bloggers has the right not to have our blogs or comments taken over by others with issues not seen as germane to the blog's general intent. And to suggest that commenters take it elsewhere. Fair is fair.

This is not the first time that your blog has left things that could -- and should -- be made perfectly clear left unaddressed or clouded.

Two recent examples --

The public got a 'take that' whack for not attending a BOE presentation.

'STATE OF THE DISTRICT' PRESENTATION

Would it not be reasonable to expect -- since you considered it so important -- that YOU would have promoted the 'State of the District' address on YOUR BLOG? If I read you correctly, you would have found out about it in your Friday packet before the meeting. That would have left you from Friday to Tuesday (since the meeting was held on Wednesday) to post something useful for your many readers inviting, encouraging or challenging them to come out for this key presentation.

Yet you did not.

However, you didn't resist a little tongue-lashing (and WHERE were YOU?) of the public after the fact (see here). What is YOUR responsibility for the admittedly low turnout?

And if the District's efforts to put the info in the little fluttery text box on its website and in a legal notice (I would want to see proof it was even mentioned in a legal notice) only netted TWO members of the public, why isn't it fair to ask why the District's public relations machine didn't do more?

Guess what, Mark Spivey is putting just everything that folks throw at him on the InPlainfield microsite. So, why not make use of that outlet, which is the best read of all Gannett's microsites in the whole state of New Jersey?

The event has a clear deadline, how should folks interpret today's post?

ALRICK BROWN 'PLAINFIELD'S PROMISE' EVENT

Then we have today's post promoting the P-PAL's event presenting the very talented Alrick Brown, hometown kid, PHS grad and successful film director and screenwriter in their 'Plainfield's Promise' speaker series.

THIS Saturday, at Washington Community School.

But one question is left UNADDRESSED.

Reading the fine print on the event's graphic, there is a notice that the deadline to register for this event was OCTOBER 15, nearly two weeks ago.

So, is the deadline in effect, in which case folks should disregard your notice?

Or has the deadline been waived, in which case those interested should go ahead and show up?

Why would you leave such a question up in the air?

Though being bloggers means we are free to express our opinions on all sorts of things and in as convoluted and obscure a manner as suits us, when any of us turns to PROMOTING MEETINGS OR EVENTS, we are subject to the same FIVE W's PLUS ONE of the mainstream media: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and hoW.

It's common sense. It's best practice. It encourages readers to take us seriously.

Bottom line: From now on, when I read your entries to summarize them for CLIPS, if I can't get the gist in the same amount of time I spend on the others, I'll take a pass. And that includes including you in the headline teaser -- with or without 'clickworthy' copy.

Life is too short, and there is so much ground to cover.

Especially in the Queen City, which has to be setting some kind of record to have TWENTY TWO blogs and counting.

---

• Doc's Potpourri:  "10/25/10 Potpourri, with back-and-forth on BOE meeting"
• Standing in the Gap:  "10/22/10: And WHERE were YOU?"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Whose soap-box is it? Burney blame-game compels Dan's response.

Burney claimed to have been left out, though it wasn't so.

With all the serious stuff going on in Plainfield and the world, Councilor Rashid Burney had to go and kick off his 'NO-BLAME CAMPAIGN' for civic improvement by throwing a hissyfit, BLAMING Dan for not giving him star billing in CLIPS' Sunday headline (see Burney email and Dan's response here).

Burney's tantrum, combined with some whiny (and unpublished) comments by various supporters of laissez-faire in Mayor Robinson-Briggs' policies and in defense of the selling OUT (not to mention the possible selling OFF) of Plainfield's true interest by various and sundry 'public servants' lead me to the conclusion it is time to define yet again whose SOAP-BOXES CLIPS and PLAINFIELD TODAY are.

Today, I take up CLIPS. Tomorrow will be PLAINFIELD TODAY.

C L I P S

A little background. CLIPS got its start way back in 2005, when I was still a city employee, as an INTERNAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER for City Council and administration members, keeping them abreast of news items about Plainfield appearing in the media and available for reading ONLINE. It became a BLOG in November of that year (see the first post here).

When I retired, I continued it in the same vein -- gathering together news items about Plainfield or of interest to Plainfielders (from my perspective) -- as one of my two PERSONAL BLOGS.

Over the years it has grown and changed and as Council members and others have joined the local blogosphere, I have tried to keep abreast of the wealth of expression Plainfielders engage in.

Having run a successful mail-order business (in historic preservation, which is what brought me to Plainfield in 1983 in the first place), I try to craft the 'headline' at the top of each post in such a way as to encourage readers to 'tear open the envelope' to get at the news.

Reader 'Rob' has sometimes zinged me for thus luring him with the headlines, but he has never complained the articles weren't worth reading or didn't supply what the teaser copy promised (though perhaps not in the exact way he expected).

I'd like to think that's part of what makes CLIPS interesting and draws constantly increasing numbers of readers.

But Blogger, the platform on which things run, had a limitation until recently in the amount of text that could be put in a headline. That limitation forced me to choose the most interesting stories from that day's blog posts, prioritize them, and condense the gist of them to fewer characters than even Twitter allows (140).

Recent improvements in Blogger have relieved that pressure somewhat, but I still try to keep the headline to about three lines of text, so as not to overwhelm the 'skimmers'.

There is no contract between Dan and the bloggers. I just am happy to steer traffic to each and every one when they have a fresh post. I try to give Councilors a hit in the headline (by the way, Councilor Burney is the only Council member who DOES NOT send me a courtesy heads-up email to advise they have a new post), but even so their posts may be judged to be not as gripping as one of the other regular bloggers -- which is why you see Bernice, Olddoc and Maria prominently featured every day.

In any event, to get to ANY blogger's post, the reader has to go down to the green typeface paragraph where the bloggers most recent posts are featured. The only way folks would have gotten to Councilor Burney's post from yesterday's CLIPS would have been to go there -- just like any other day. So, Burney wasn't overlooked, nor was he cheated of those readers who would want to follow what he says, despite his complaint about 'a small line in the middle' (about which he never previously complained).

Burney added a clarification (if not a correction) to his post.

Did Burney's post merit marquee treatment?

As editor-in-chief I didn't think so.

The 'no-blame' pledge is an interesting concept (not well-grounded in American history, I might add), but if you read Burney's post carefully, it's more focused on him and his patting himself on the back for 'working with everybody' than on proposing how he is going to actually TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR MAKING IT HAPPEN in Plainfield.

Secondly, I've had experience of Councilor Burney and his support of the Citizen Campaign's ideas.

Take, for instance, the CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY ACT, which was supposed to make volunteering for, and serving on, Plainfield's many boards and commissions easier and more transparent. Can Councilor Burney explain why it is still not in force -- after several years -- WITHOUT BLAMING anyone?

Editorial call? An interesting post, but no headline cigar.

I overhead a mother whose young son was throwing a tantrum in the supermarket the other day. Gripping his arm tightly and steering him toward the checkout, she said through clenched teeth, 'Just wait 'til you get home, young man'.

We're all adults, and I don't have to threaten Concilor Burney with what will happen when he gets home. He'll only have the blog's readers to face.

Will that be punishment enough?

---

• Plainfield Today: "Councilor Burney accuses Dan of snubbing his post. You be the judge."

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Tweaking CLIPS

Rationalizing the layout of the Plainfield blogs on the CLIPS blog should make it easier to follow the most recent posts.

I'll put up a précis daily of the blogs that have posted since my last check-in (since I post CLIPS in the AM, and don't usually go back to check the other blogs until the NEXT morning -- we should all have some life away from our computers, right? -- this may not always be the latest word from Plainfield's many bloggers, and I trust you'll be OK with that or do your own checking ad interim).

The blogroll itself now includes all the 'active' blogs, broken roughly into --

1. the regulars
2. elected officials
3. other commentary and observations
   
4. school-related blogs
5. the Cable TV and Citizens Budget committees
   

Also, the sidebar links to mainstream news media sources have been updated to include Gannett's new Plainfield microsite.

As Ovid once remarked, 'Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit'.

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Sneak peek of Courier's new Plainfield 'microsite'

Courier's new Plainfield 'microsite'.

Got a Google internet alert that gives a sneak peek of the Courier's new website highlighting Plainfield.

Plainfield has been added to a growing list of communities that Gannett New Jersey is outfitting with their own individually tailored websites (see Plainfield's here) or 'microsites'.

While Courier reporter Mark Spivey had said a couple of months ago that the project was under way, I had no idea it was so far along until the Google alert arrived in my inbox.

The site sports all the Courier's Plainfield-related news stories, plus photo galleries and links to Plainfield websites and blogs (including the usual suspects), as well as a Twitter feed and a 'flyerboard' (a bulletin board for community flyers; seems to be empty at present).

And, of course, ads.

Gannett's papers, along with every other newspaper in the country -- including the Ledger, whose advertising income is down yet again, prompting another buyout -- are trying to figure out how to make money online.

The Courier, I am told, does make money off its online advertising and a robust online readership.

One of the things that market research has shown the newspapers, though, is that readers have an insatiable interest in local news (and, judging from the Ledger's community forums, trash).

Map shows current roster of microsites.

Gannett's 18 (so far) 'InJersey' sites seem intended to capitalize on this.

What does this mean for the Plainfield blogs?

Since we're not in competition with the Courier, the new website's links should garner even more readers for Plainfield's very active blog community.

As for my CLIPS blog, which aggregates news about Plainfield from many sources, the Courier included, I'm expecting continued growth in readership, since it's likely to be snowcone-time-in-Hades before Gannett decides to put links up to its competitor's stories.

Be sure to check out the new 'microsite' and Mark Spivey's accompanying (and punningly named) new blog 'In the Field' (see here).

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• InJersey:  "Plainfield InJersey"
• Mark Spivey's blog:  "In the Field"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Two new blogs swell Plainfield blogger ranks

Nat Singleton's blog debuts today.

Two new blogs join the Plainfield blogosphere today: Nat Singleton, prompted by Jerry Green's misinformation, is blogging back at Dumbed Down America, where his 'Welcome' post sets out the reasons he is blogging and his vision for the blog.

Vashon Hill's student blog joins the lineup today.

Vashon Hill, president of the Leadership Project, is blogging at A Student's Prospective, with a host of topics looking forward to the new school year. The Leadership Project, which is serving both Jefferson and Cook schools has a mission statement that includes --

The Leadership Project is an investment in the future of the Plainfield Public School District and it’s community. Its purpose is to broaden awareness and develop leadership skills in a select group of students, motivating them to become positive role models, active and committed to their community responsibilities.

"We are prepared to do whatever it takes to help our future students achieve high academic standards"

I hope you will find them both interesting, informative and another part of your essential daily Plainfield 'fix'.

This brings the total number of regular (and semi-regular) Plainfield bloggers to NINETEEN as far as I can tell. Can any other community of similar size boast so many?

Beginning tomorrow, both will be integrated into the daily updates on the CLIPS blog here.

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• New Plainfield Blogs --
• Vashon Hill:  A Student's Prospective
• Nat Singleton:  Dumbed Down America

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Two (teacher?) blogs keep an eye on Plainfield schools

Understanding Plainfield's school situation takes all the help one can find, and there are two blogs (by teachers?) that should be on the check-out list of those who want to understand what's going on with the institution whose fiscal bite dwarfs the Plainfield taxpayer's usual pet peeve, city government.

Plainfielders are ever in the debt of Maria Pellum who, despite classes of her own, still finds time to weigh in on issues of deep concern to the community about the schools (as well as matters at Evergreen School, her particular corner of Plainfield's educational universe).

But it certainly helps to find that there are folks at work within the school district who are trying to assess what is going on, where good things are happening and where they are not, what games are being played and what is at stake.

For these kinds of insight, you will want to check out these two blogs --

• Dr. e = mc² (see here)
  
  
• An eye on Plainfield schools (see here)

I believe they are done by two teachers, perhaps at PHS. You may find some of the discussion a little oblique (as contrasted to Maria or myself), but you can understand that there are reasons.

Among those reasons can be that the politics of being a district employee can be just as volatile and dangerous as anywhere else in the real world, and the typical rewards-and-punishments mindset has plenty of room for play in hierarchical, command-and-control organizations like school districts.

I hope you will check them out, and give the authors feedback through your comments to encourage them.

A NOTE TO THE SCHOOL BLOGGERS: If you want to make it a bit easier for folks to find your posts, there are two simple things that can be done. Since many folks find Plainfield-related items by Googling 'plainfield' plus with or without other search terms, it definitely helps to --

1) find a way to use the word 'Plainfield' somewhere in your blog description (Blogger allows a tag line called 'blog description' -- as in my 'where Plainfield turns for news' -- and other blog platforms have options for such descriptive lines that can be either shown or hidden). These help Google's search bots to find and tag you as they crawl the Web; and

2) find a way to work the word 'Plainfield' into the opening 15 words of each post. It may sound limiting, but it also helps Google to find and tag stuff for searchers interested in the topic 'Plainfield'. I hate it sometimes, because I have clever opening lines that this tactic just kills, but then I ask myself which is more important -- folks finding the posts, or me getting off a good line.

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• Plainfield schools blog: "Dr. e = mc²"
• Plainfield schools blog: "An eye on Plainfield schools"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Bernice and Dan the blogosphere's Allen & Benny?

Comedian Fred Allen offers an opinion on Jack Benny's musicianship.

Plainfield's pre-eminent blogger took a poke at Dan today (see here), ultimately posing the question of whether the two are 'the Fred Allen and Jack Benny of the Plainfield blogosphere'.

That last may only be meaningful to Plainfielders of a certain age, but the un-superannuated can find a sort of Cliff Notes here (Allen) and here (Benny) -- the keyword being 'feud'.

In 1937, Allen wisecracked about 'a certain alleged violinist' and he and Benny (friends in real life) were off on radio's longest running gag.

Allen and Benny fight over a Christmas toy.





Allen smooches Benny, but what is the croquet mallet for?





Benny and Allen in an on-air 'fight'.

Perhaps the real question here is whether Dan, as some say, 'was born ignorant and has been losing ground ever since' or whether he is, as others say, a 'fugitive from a Ripley cartoon'.

Or maybe an anti-Norbert Pearlroth?

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Plainfield blogs rank high on the Web

How big is the Web?

Plainfield's blog scene came in for a mention in Mark Spivey's end-of-year technology story last week (see here), leading me to check out how we rank on the Web.

The Plainfield blog scene is truly remarkable, with 16 identifiably authored blogs and counting (plus one more, if you include Bo Vastine -- who lives a couple of doors over the city line in Scotch Plains -- and who comments on the 22nd Legislative District, in which Plainfield is included).

When I told the presenter at a workshop on blogs for Rutgers journalism students some time back that Plainfield had (then) a dozen active blogs, he was amazed at the number. That was then, this is now.

One quibble with the Courier's copy editor (not with Mark, who does not write the headlines or section heads) is the heading 'COMPETING BLOGS'. I really think of us all as complementary, rather than competing. While several of us (Bernice, Olddoc, Piv, myself and the blogging Councilors) cover some of the same turf, each blog has its own voice and view and reading them all will give Plainfielders a pretty rounded view of what's going on in town.

Can we find out how Plainfield's blogs stack up as masters of the (Web) universe?

Kinda, sorta.

There are several problems --

1. First, blogs are websites of a particular kind (usually the effort of a single person, easily but often irregularly updated, mostly non-commercial);
   
   
2. The Web is an ever-changing universe, just like the real one, with new sites and blogs constantly being born even as others die;
   
   
3. This means that stats are literally like frames in a video, changing every moment;
   
   
4. Since the Web is by its very nature decentralized, there is no one central authority for what's going on.

Given these issues, it is still possible to get a meaningful glimpse of how Plainfield's blogs are faring in the overall mix.

First, how big is the Web?

For an answer, I turned to Netcraft (see here), which basically tracks the Web for the types of servers being used, but which has a useful chart --

Netcraft finds an increase of 7 million active sites over the past year, and the chart indicates a total of approximately 72.6 million (72,600,000) active websites (the total of registered websites is on the order of 240 million). That's quite a few needles in the haystack.

All well and good, but can we find out where Plainfield's blogs stand in the mix?

The service which I use is Alexa, a free ranking rating tool that bloggers can install to monitor their traffic and that of other sites or blogs in which they are interested (see here; for a peek at rankings without the bother of installing the tool, see Evrsoft's search page here).

Be aware that Alexa and other site trackers (like comScore, Hitwise, Nielsen Interactive and Quantcast) are businesses vying with each other and each snipes at the other about its accuracy. Among the factors that enter into a site's ranking are the frequency of posting, numbers of unique visitors, numbers of pages viewed, and links to and from other websites. For our purposes, Alexa is considered 'one of the most accurate FREELY AVAILABLE tools' for ranking sites', as Evrsoft says.

Hedged about with all these caveats, what I found on the eve of the New Year is that Plainfield blogs line up in a range (LOWER numbers indicate HIGHER TRAFFIC) from 621,001 to 9.6 million, with the middle of the pack in the 800,000+ range. Plainfield's blog contingent is DEFINITELY NOT shabby. (For a little context, consider these traffic rankings: Courier News [38,749], Star-Ledger [2,431] and New York Times [97].)

Here's a chart --

BLOG	OWNER	TRAFFIC RANKING**
CLIPS	Dan Damon	621,001
Plainfield Today	Dan Damon	627,990
Plainfield Plaintalker	Bernice Paglia	789,367
Plainfield Sports News	Augustine Dashiell	807,079
Jerry Green's Page	Asm Jerry Green	811,741
Doc's Potpourri	Harold S. Yood, MD	813,064
Maria's Blog	Maria Pellum	825,574
Piv For Plainfield	Jim Pivnichny	842,687
Mapping It Out	Adrian Mapp	864,233
For Good Government	Cory Storch	869,880
Positive Change	Annie McWilliams	873,531
As I See It	Rashid Burney	873,532
The (TV) Show Must Go On	Jackie Schnoop	1,669,153
PEPTalk: Revisited	Renata Hernandez	5,006,907
Confessions of a Bathrobe Blogger	Rebecca Williams	8,037,864
Dottie G Sez	Dottie Gutenkauf	9,681,343
**As measured on ALEXA, 12/31/2009.

Keep in mind that on any given day, a blog's traffic may spike considerably: Plainfield Today's traffic shot up nearly tenfold when I posted about PolitickerNJ's overnight decision to go from FREE to $1,800/year for access (see here; the story was of intense interest to the NJ blogosphere). I also noted on Jackie's TV blog that her December 20 post Survivor: Samoa's season finale (see here) garnered an amazing 228 comments, leaving the rest of us to eat our hearts out.

While we're talking Plainfield blogs, please note that I am adding Dottie Gutenkauf's blog, Dottie G Sez, to the daily list (thanks to Dr. Yood for bringing it to folks' attention; please drop by and check it out), which also includes Rebecca Williams' Confessions of a Bathrobe Blogger, Jackie Schnoop's The (TV) Show Must Go On, and Renata Hernandez' PEPTalk: Revisited (where today she announces her candidacy for the Board of Ed).

Anyone with thoughts to share should consider this invigorating pasttime.

Come on in, the water's fine!

---

• Courier: "The age of multitasking" -- Pertinent section is on page 2.
• Netcraft: "December 2009 Server Survey" -- Most current stats on Web size.
• Alexa: "Alexa: The Web Information Company"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Where are they now? Plainfield's 'stalking horse' political blogs

During Plainfield's most recent political seasons there have been two 'stalking horse' blogs perhaps not known to the general blog-reading public. I thought to check up on them this weekend, to see what they're up to now that there is no political contest.

I call them 'stalking horse' blogs because, while pretending to be disinterested, they actually are were decoys promoting political candidacies.

Of course you know that Dan has endorsed political candidates, and you may ask yourself why he did not include these blogs in the daily CLIPS roundups during the campaign season.

Close readers of the blogs will note that Dan, Olddoc, Bernice and Maria have all commented at various times on 'anonymous' bloggers. Dan has made it very clear that if a blogger won't sign her or his real name, they won't be covered in CLIPS. Fair enough, right?

Now, to the blogs.

The first is 'No Strings Attached', whose tagline defies compression, and which started appearing in January 2009, with an interesting spurt of activity during the fall general election season.

The 'author' of the blog claims to have 'a Bachelor of Arts wherein English, History, and British Literature are truffles of sweetness in my world'. (Take that, those of you who ever thought Dan could be highfalutin'!)

I say 'author' in quotes because if you read through the posts you will notice that as the fall political season approaches, the 'voice' of the writer undergoes a distinct transformation.

There are those who think that the blog had become at this point a mouthpiece for Assemblyman Jerry Green in his re-election bid, as it echoed his style and his themes.

Read and decide for yourself.

The second blog is "The Plain View", billed as 'A Commentary on People, Places Events and Life in Plainfield, NJ'.

This blog claims to be authored by Jazz Johnson, whom some will remember as Plainfield's (and before that, the PMUA's) public information officer. There are a total of nine posts from March through May.

I say 'claims' because as Plainfield's public information officer, I had years of experience with Jazz's writing style in numerous press releases and personal communications.

The writing style in these blog posts bears no resemblance at all to Jazz's as far as I can tell, and the blog was never noted on CLIPS because I thought the posts were authored by someone other than Jazz.

Rumors eventually surfaced that suggested they were written by a high-ranking PMUA executive -- which might be inferred from both the attacks on Adrian Mapp and the extended defense of the PMUA (remember the PMUA was a hot topic during the primary).

While I have no proof, I do find it interesting that the posts ceased after May 20.

Was there nothing else to write about?

Meanwhile, back at the daily slog you will find Dan, Bernice, Olddoc, and Maria, now joined by Piv as a regular blogger.

And we have Councilors Mapp, Storch, McWilliams and Burney, as well as Assemblyman Jerry Green who chime in frequently, though not daily.

That, plus Plainfield Sports News, Plainfield Trees, and the three personal blogs by Rebecca, Renata and Jackie make Plainfield perhaps the liveliest blog scene in New Jersey.

Could even be livelier if 'stalking horses' want to sign their real names.

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-- Dan Damon [follow]

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UPDATE: Mayor Sharon and 'lying bloggers challenge'

Plainfield Mayor Robinson-Briggs said bloggers "dont' always tell the truth".

On October 16, Plainfield Today challenged Mayor Robinson-Briggs to cite chapter and verse to back up her charge that "city bloggers don't always tell the truth" (quoting Bernice, see here).

It is now two weeks since the challenge was issued, and no response from the Mayor -- except to assert at the League of Women Voters forum that residents can't get the facts from the blogs.

Chapter and verse please, Mayor. Readers are waiting.

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• Plainfield Today: "Challenge to Mayor Sharon on blogger allegations"

-- Dan Damon

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