Blog Herald 'mistake' draws ire of former owner, staff --inquirer.net

Blog Herald 'mistake' draws ire of former owner, staff

By Joey Alarilla

INQUIRER.net

Last updated 04:07pm (Mla time) 01/25/2007


MANILA, Philippines -- Saying that The Blog Herald did not intend any disrespect, the Filipino editor of the international blogging news site described as an "accident" the deletion of a Dec. 1 post announcing the launch of a new site founded by former employees.

The deletion of the post announcing the launch of new blogging news site 901am.com by ex-employees led by David Krug fueled angry posts and claims that The Blog Herald was ignoring the legacy of its alumni, including original site founder Duncan Riley.

"I was away on vacation when this happened so I haven't really had the chance to communicate with Duncan and David [Krug]. Frankly, it was just an accident. We have so many people at the editor's level that somehow it might have messed up the post entries.

"Actually, this wasn't the first [time] it happened to us... [there were] at least two other prior incidents where a post (one actually on Digg) was accidentally deleted and we had to restore it manually," Abe Olandres, editor of The Blog Herald, said in response to an e-mail from INQUIRER.net.

The Blog Herald, founded in 2003 by Duncan Riley, was the first blog to focus exclusively on news on the blogosphere. In 2006, Riley sold The Blog Herald to BlogMedia, Inc. (now known as ProBlogging, Inc.) and Matt Craven took over.

Late last year, Craven then sold The Blog Herald to UK-based Bloggy Network Ltd., now known as Splashpress Media, which tapped Filipino bloggers to oversee the site.

Olandres, more commonly known in the blogosphere by his nick yuga, is arguably the most popular blogger in the Philippines. In December, he took over the helm of The Blog Herald together with fellow Filipino professional blogger J. Angelo Racoma.

In the Jan. 17 post "Why Your Competition Doesn't Link to You," former The Blog Herald blogger and now 901am founder Krug said that a post that originally appeared at http://www.blogherald.com/2006/12/01/david-krug-launches-901am/ was taken down from The Blog Herald.

"The new ownership has been a bit hurtful. Removing a posting announcing the 901am launch. I thought long and hard on how to deal with this. Emails to Abe Olandres have been ignored. I worked hard on that site. And was a huge part of taking it to the next level where it was at when Matt Craven sold it," Krug said in his post.

INQUIRER.net e-mailed Krug but did not receive a reply as of press time.

In a comment on Krug's blog post, Olandres apologized and explained that he was on vacation at the time.

"I was away and was not able to immediately reply back to David's e-mail about the incident [to] which he took offense. I have since commented on his blog the reason I wasn't able to check my e-mail and reply ASAP. That missing post and links have now been restored. We have no intentions of blocking 901am from getting coverage at Blog Herald," Olandres said in his e-mail to INQUIRER.net.

Krug's post drew the attention of former The Blog Herald owner Riley, who revealed in his comments that his name had been taken off the list of authors by the new owners of the site.

In a later post on Jan. 22 on his own blog , Riley spoke out against the removal of his name from the site's author column, saying in part: "I've done nothing wrong to the new owners, indeed I covered the buy positively and even participated in some of the conversation about how the buy is representative of an ascendant Pinoy blogosphere… and yet I get removed."

In an e-mail interview with INQUIRER.net, Riley said he found out that his name had been removed around two to three weeks ago.

Asked if he had contacted The Blog Herald, Riley replied: "I didn't try to contact the owners, it's their site and they can do as they please, but I do reserve the right to not like it. It only really became an issue after I read that they'd been deleting posts linking to content created by David Krug, and unfortunately when I raised it in the 901am thread, they initially denied doing it, that I suppose is what annoyed me more than anything. They're still claiming it was an accident. I don't believe in accidents."

In a separate e-mail, however, Racoma, who is the marketing manager of The Blog Herald as well as a contributor to the site, explained that the trimming down of the list of authors was not done out of malice.

"Let me clarify that we did not delete any of the articles of the previous contributors, and especially those of the previous editors. We do respect the contributions of Duncan and Matt [Craven], and in fact in our new design (which will come in the next few months) we plan to dedicate a whole page especially for Duncan's posts.

"We only trimmed the list down so the column would not be too long. The Blog Herald has changed hands a couple of times, after all, and the author list has grown to be unwieldy. A complete list of the authors with links to their entries is still at the archives page at http://www.blogherald.com/archives," Racoma told INQUIRER.net.

Racoma, however, said he was surprised by the deletion of the original 901am post. A new announcement has been posted at http://www.blogherald.com/2007/01/20/901am-officially-launches/".

"If you're asking about the removal of the post about 901am.com, then we're equally baffled. When the site was moved to our servers mid-December, the content was as is. We did not remove any old posts ourselves. Perhaps there was an arrangement between the old writers and the old editorial team for them to retain copyright to their articles, and for them to reserve the right to have these taken offline," Racoma said.

In comments on the posts of Krug and Riley, Tony Hung and Mark Saunders, members of The Blog Herald editorial team, apologized for the accidental deleting of the post and the removal of the names.

In a comment on Riley's post, Hung said in part: "Not putting up your name to honor the legacy you've left us was a terrible mistake. The reasons why it was done is pretty immaterial, but your and Matt's name are going up right now. Yes, we're green at this, and yes, we've made some mistakes. But we're also going to do everyhing (sic) we can to learn from them, and take the time to make it right."

Saunders added: "Duncan, I'd like to second what Tony said and profusely apologize for offending you- it was not intended. I have the greatest respect for you and the legacy that you have built with the Blog Herald."

In his post, one of the issues that Krug raised is that blogs should link even to the sites of their competitors. He said that not only is this practice in keeping with the spirit of the blogging community, but it provides more information to readers.

Riley also stressed that blogs should make it a policy to link to competitors.

"John Donne wrote that no man is an island unto himself, and likewise no blog is an island unto itself. Blogs are built around linking; it's the ecology that has driven the phenomenal growth in blogging over the past five years. Absolutely blogs should link to competitors, even small ones and new ones. When I owned The Blog Herald, I even went out of my way to highlight the competition because to write a blog about blogging you need to embrace the diversity that the blogosphere provides… if you're not a believer then you're not going to go very far. It's also good karma," Riley said.

Asked about The Blog Herald's policy on linking to competitors, Racoma replied: "Our policy: link away! It's a blog, after all, and it's best to link to other relevant sources, even if these be competitors. And you can see on the 'friends' column at the bottombar that we have links to 901am.com, The Blogging times, Huffungton Post, Blogging Pro, etc., which may be considered 'competitors' of The Blog Herald. These are randomly selected from the blogroll, though (so as not to be too long).

"But really, we see the 'competition' as a friendly one. It's not like we're competing head on like Coke and Pepsi. Being blogs we have different audiences and readerships, and hence even the editorial slant is supposed to be different. So we might have an opinion on some things that other sites might have differing views on. That's what blogging is about, after all."

So, is it all's well that ends well?

"Apparently, our emotions (both sides, Blog Herald and the others) got the better of us, and made us act like fools. We talked about the issue privately and all is well now. Do check the comment threads on the first link above and on our post about 901am.com here: http://www.blogherald.com/2007/01/20/901am-officially-launches," Racoma said.

For his part, Riley said: "They've restored links to myself and Matt Craven, and they have apologized, however I'd think the whole situation would have left a bad taste in a few people's mouths in relation to the new owners, myself included.

"It's not exactly life threatening stuff and I've got 500 other things on the go at the moment, so it's not something I intend on dwelling on… or deleting posts or links over."

E-mail the author at joeyalarilla@gmail.com and visit his blog at www.alarilla.com.



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