Flippin' Amsterdam NY

I’m a bit surprised to read some of the reactions from Mark Robarge(here, here) and Charlie Kraebel(here) on my post concerning anonymity. I’m now blogging on blogging again — which I swore off doing– but I do want to offer a counter to some of their points and also offer some observations. Let me state that this is in the spirit of constructive dialog and debate.

First, I’m most surprised at the claims of ‘cherry picking’ and ‘taking my post out of context’. While I agree that their posts contain a larger discussion than just this blog, I’m just not seeing how I misrepresented their criticism of this blog. I think their posts are quite clear, direct and pointed in terms of criticism of anonymous posts, bloggers and specifically this blog. After all this is an anonymous blog with anonymous posters and in fact, it is called ‘Flippin’ Amsterdam’. I’ve read both posts again and I reach the same conclusion each time. I also as usual provide a link to the original source so readers can decide if I’m spinning something or taking it out of context. I don’t think so at all in this case especially as doing so would undermine the entire point of my post.

Second, I’m willing to grant Mark Robarge that I acted irresponsibly in ascribing the views of the Recorder to their views on their personal blogs or vice-versa. However, I think irresponsibility cuts both ways with this accusation. Follow me for a bit on this.

Mark Robarge’s initial post (here) details his professional experience and policy on editorials, op-eds and news stories from his work in the newspaper industry and presumably his current work on the Recorder. So in my defense, let me explain my chain of thought on this point. I surmised from his post that Robarge’s professional experience shaped and formed his view point on anonymity on the Web. Or said another way: the views of Mark Robarge blogger and Mark Robarge editor/reporter at the Recorder were one-and-the-same on this issue. And from there I ascribed his views to those of the Recorder. (and also those of Charlie Kraebel) Mea culpa.

Here is where it gets interesting though. Let’s take a look at a few statements from Mark Robarge ’s comments (here):

THAT is why I want to know who is saying what. I want to know if what I’m reading is an honest opinion or just another flack’s attempt at spin.

Charlie in his comment (here):

I link to this blog because I like it, and I don’t simply dismiss every post on here because it’s an anonymous blog. Yeah, there are times when it’s hard to take some posts too seriously because of the anonymity factor because while what’s being posted may be good for discussion purposes, often times the why and who are important because everyone has a reason for starting a discussion.

I point out the posts above as context to Mark Robarge’s statement here:

Second, I must point out that you are way offbase in directing your anger at the posts by both myself and Charlie towards the Recorder. Both of us are posting these blogs strictly as private citizens and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Recorder or anyone other than ourselves, and trying to ascribe those opinions to the Recorder is irresponsible on your part.

So by the same reasoning would it not also be irresponsible for them to view my opinions as not my own and somehow wanting to ascribe them to some other entity so they may be viewed more seriously? Why do they get to cleanly define their opinions ’strictly as private citizens’ not ascribed to anyone or anything else yet I am not able to do so? And why are opinions from non-anonymous sources more ‘honest’ than from an anonymous source? Isn’t honesty determined by what you say rather than who says it? I’m not following along with the reasoning here.

A final point on the comments above is from Charlie Kraebel’s comment of “…often times the why and who are important because everyone has a reason for starting a discussion.“

I start posts based upon what I read mostly and hear sometimes. You will note that I very rarely attribute  public statements without linking and identifying the source of statements in written form. I will on occasion paraphrase spoken public comments but clearly identify it as such and only if the comments strike me as particularly worth noting and not available in written form. I find it odd to think of my posts as needing a ‘reason’ as Charlie Kraebel states. How about a mixture of curiosity, impudence, self-interest, amusement, advocacy, civic-mindedness and megalomania?

Do I always find anonymous posters and bloggers as constructive forces in the debate? No. Do I think anonymity sometimes enables darker instincts as evidenced on my blog with racist and misogynistic posts? Sure.

As far as the AmsterdamExpress brouhaha, I find it amusing to see my post proclaiming my copyright made last week’s issue with the lead-in titled: “Read what Flippinamsterdam has banned us from publishing“. I appreciate the cheekiness and ribbing; I can roll with the punches too.

I may disagree with CK and MR on this issue and others but I think as journalists and bloggers they enrich the debate.  That’s all I’m trying to do too.

I happened to check my blog traffic and it seems to be on a tear today. From my blog hits and search terms, it looks like it’s the shadycat issue likely driven by the Recorder story here.

I’m more than concerned that the debate on Chalmers will now be framed as some referendum on shadycat’s comments with the pro-Chalmers arguments somehow framed as affirming shadycat’s ‘argument’ and reduced to somehow endorsing the statements.  I’m not saying it’s rational or reasonable; I’m saying it’s gaining political traction and a way to reframe the debate. And as it does it adds another club to the anti-Chalmers arsenal.

Again, the reality is that the issue is not going away and from the public statements, I’m not sure this issue will go away as they are just kicking the can down the street. If you look at the public statements from the Democratic Party prior to today’s, I’m not sure who would buy them; I’m certainly not.

Someone needs to own and then disown the comments against the SouthSide before Chalmers and other issues get ‘pwned’ instead.

Our weekend jaunt turned into an extended stay so back to blogging with more substantive posts tomorrow.

Update: First, thank you all for playlists so far– some things to visit and revisit– and appreciate it very much. Let me up the challenge: I’m traveling and limited for time so if I had to choose one CD to bring, what would it be? Thread still open on playlists too. Thanks!

I’m a bit bored with music of late as radio offers the same-of-the-same  and my music collection needs an overhaul. So curious as to what’s on your playlist that is worthy of a listen…

From the Albany Business Journal (here):

Montgomery County: sales down 30 percent, median price up 1 percent, to $121,300; year-to-date sales down 23 percent, median sales price down 2 percent, to $96,100.

I’m curious as to how our local market performs relative to the capital district market. I don’t have the numbers to crunch this but my sense would be that we tend to lag/lead in terms of prices: we lag behind in price appreciation (last market to see significant uptick in price) compared to other local markets but we then lead in terms of price declines (first market to see significant downtick in price).

Also curious to see what is happening with foreclosures and defaults locally so I’ll try to track that down.

Curious what others think on our real estate price dynamics or if I’m way off with my lag/lead thinking.

A great thread on rethinking our urban landscape (here)

Updated: I eliminated wording that on second read could be misconstrued.

This analysis (here) must be resoundingly Serious as the blogger uses their real name. Personally I don’t think it makes financial or mathematical sense with its lack of clarity on the baseline financials and apples/oranges of assessed/taxable values coupled with an eye popping increase of 160% in assessed values to result in a $60K tax increase.  Or maybe the old assessment was horribly understated…

But I’m too cowardly to say anything that might push back… Woe is me . And if anyone asks, you didn’t get this from me.

Charlie Kraebel and Mark Robarge pick up where Michael Lazarou left off on the subject of anonymous bloggers. If you recall, Michael Lazarou characterized me and my blog (here) as follows:

• the skewed information that a blog can present over the Internet without accountability
• other type of blog which I refer to as a UB (Unidentified Blog) is one I consider to be disingenuous.
• But when it comes from an unknown source I value it as worthless information.
• Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to divulge your name when submitting letters to the editor? Just think of having the ability to write whatever your heart desires without damaging name or reputation.
• Maybe it would serve you better to come out of the closet to express your ideas instead of funneling thoughts to imaginary friends on the Internet
• If you prefer to remain anonymous then let me be the first to say thank you for keeping your best kept secrets (or are they opinions?) to yourself.

Picking up where Mr. Lazarou leaves off, Charlie weighs in with this (here):

I’ve never hosted a blog anonymously. That’s because I’ve always believed if you’ve got something to say, man up and use your name.

Although the author of Flippin’ Amsterdam makes excellent points at times, and as a private citizen he has the right to remain anonymous, although at times it’s hard to take those thoughts seriously because there’s no name or identity behind it.

And Mark Robarge characterizes it as such under the headline ‘The Coward’s Way’ (here):

The coward’s way

I have long been a critic of people who post anonymously to the Internet, whether it’s people who comment on newspaper stories or who add their opinions to message boards or who even post their own blogs.

I think you get the point: coward, liar, UnSerious, Less-than-manly, disingenuous, worthless and a dose of socially outcast, or even delusional.  I think the picture on Charlie’s site paints the portrait pretty well. If only I were so handsome and had such a nice office as ‘Milton’ in the photo. Sigh.

But man, that blogger creeps me out. Oh wait, it’s me.  So let me restate what I said before:

As far as accusations of lack of accountability, bias, worthlessness of information, I let my posts speak for themselves. My readers, albeit imaginary, can then decide whether my blog merits their time. In fact, my readers can post comments on my blog even if they’re critical of my post and blog.

While Mr. Lazarou accords anonymous radio callers all due respect, I deserve none apparently. So if I were to voice the very same opinions with the very same words on the radio, that would be perfectly fine. But if you write them down in a blog, that’s a problem. Because we all know that callers on local radio share none of the characteristics Lazarou attributes to my blog: bias, skewed information, misinformation. What an utterly laughable argument.

And for good measure, I’ll echo what Zero Hedge has to say about being an anonymous blogger:

though often maligned (typically by those frustrated by an inability to engage in ad hominem attacks) anonymous speech has a long and storied history in the united states….

…like the economist magazine, we also believe that keeping authorship anonymous moves the focus of discussion to the content of speech and away from the speaker- as it should be.

Or from Calculated Risk :

...and you think that the problem can be solved by getting one of us to drop our online personas, give you our real names, and say the same thing to you over the phone, so that you can get your editor to accept it as something other than just blogging, which everybody knows is untrustworthy ranting by anonymous nuts, you are making a faulty assumption about the relationship among us, our birthdays, and yesterday. Neither CR nor Tanta wishes to play into a set of assumptions that render what we say on the blog as unworthy of coverage by the Big Media, but what we might say on the phone to Intrepid Reporter as good dirt and straight skinny.

Do you, can you, understand the implicit insult in that? You want to talk to us because of what we have written on this blog, instead of simply engaging with what we have written on this blog. You are saying that blog entries we have written, at our own inspiration, on our own time, for our own intellectual purposes, backed up by our own research, are not good enough for you to use as source material (properly credited).

I could go on but hopefully you get the point.

What I find curious is such criticism coming from fellow bloggers who feature this blog on their own blog roll ostensibly as an endorsement of worthiness of the blog. Even more curious is why — if the characterizations presented of this blog were true– the Recorder features this blog , more weeks than not, as a ‘Best of the Blogs’ for the AmsterdamExpress news publication. I don’t get it, yet another episode of cognitive dissonance I guess.

I also don’t get why maligning anonymity of this medium is acceptable while anonymity of radio remains sacrosanct. Anybody? Anybody…

Or if I or a poster on this blog were to use words like ‘cowardly’, ‘disingenuous’, or ‘man up” to personally challenge a Recorder reporter, I simply could not imagine a more sharply worded rebuke from the commenters above on such a characterization.

My posts on shadycat were not in defense of what shadycat said but rather to the defense of anonymity of speech on this medium. I also questioned the process by which shadycat was outed to verify that in fact it was through public sources.  To me the how the outing occurred mattered more than the content itself. To Rusty Williams credit, he clearly articulated what his policies and standards were on protecting anonymity.Yet the story did not ask the obvious question to Rusty Williams or ask for a comment, I did.

Yet the core of my post centered on media policy and asked the rather unpolite questions on perhaps a slippery slope for the media defining ‘the line’ whereby insults have to cross. Some other posters on this site raised other public comments that malign different groups and neighborhoods in the city; does that deserve a front page story? Do charges of Nazism from a public official on the radio deserve front page coverage? And on.

So no one — excluding Rusty Williams– engaged on the content of the post raising some difficult yet interesting questions; instead it was to attack the blogger or other posters who raised the issues meanwhile reframing the debate as some implicit endorsement or excuse for shadycat’s comments and behavior.

In the end, I own my posts — each typo, each convoluted grammatical construct, and each word– and the posts stand or fall on their own merit. If you cannot place my posts in the right box–liberal,  conservative, blue-collar, professional,yadda,yadda — so you can ascribe the proper ‘context’ that is your problem, not mine.

Seemingly though it’s still “heads you win tails i lose” as it’s not what you say but who says it. Never mind how much reason or insight the posts articulate, it’s just the who that counts. That’s why our political debate is so dysfunctional: the who — proven constantly wrong on a myriad of issues from the Iraq War, economic policy, politics — get continued media exposure as Serious while bloggers largely correct on a host of national issues get cast as UnSerious pariahs. On a local level, it’s who says something that’s always more important than what was said. Never mind that many of the same whos are the ones who put us in the mess we’re in.

Blogging on blogging is not where I want to be and takes valuable time from more pressing issues. As some of you have issues with this blog as an anonymous blog or anonymity in general or those who cannot critically examine content to decide its merits/demerits, let me make it easy:

–Effective today the collective posts of this blog  are copyrighted. As such, I no longer authorize the Recorder to run posts in their entirety for the AmsterdamExpress or other publications. Of course, I will abide, encourage and respect fair use of content of this blog when it is deemed ‘worthy’. But the Recorder editors cannot have it both ways this blog– monetizing while trivializing.

– I’m tired of playing  “Heads You Win, Tails I Lose” with bloggers who  simultaneously endorse and then bash this blog or anonymity in general. As my past loves used to say to me, “It’s not you; it’s me. I need to see other people”. Or in today’s terms,  “Man up”,  as they say. Either way, I’m moving on.

– I will delete comments whose sole critique of a post relates to my anonymity or anonymity of a fellow poster.

– I will raise the game for posts based upon their content and their contribution to the debate. I will continue to encourage challenges and differences to views expressed by me and others.

– If you feel my actions are simply from being thin-skinned, petulant, cowardly or effete, please reread this post in its entirety taking careful note of what I’m saying.

Update: I’m rethinking comment policy and guidelines; I’m not going to tolerate threats of physical violence much less racist and misogynistic screeds. Not where I thought this blog would head but the weekend posts were a sober reminder that a downward spiral was underway. I’m struggling with how to reconcile fostering an open exchange of ideas while keeping a standard of civility in the dialogue and at the same time not overtaxing myself with being an administrative nanny or censor. At the same time, I’ve had limited time to reflect on this over the weekend and the next few days. Bottom line: changes are afoot.

I am opening up comments in the meanwhile; let’s put our best game on. Please. And thanks.

I asked a while ago to ‘raise the game’ in terms of discussion.

Regrettably the game instead is teeming with posts that do nothing to raise the game– today I’ve deleted 3 posts due to sexist and racist content and permanently deleted F.George from further posts.

Enough.

Until further notice I’m not posting ANY comments. I did not start this blog to put up with pure rubbish.

We’re all on a collective timeout. No posts/no comments. Nothing

My questions on privacy policy and practices remain unanswered in light of the shadycat episode. In fact, the political damage inflicted by the disclosure seems to justify the cost/return of outing anonymous posters  and further generates local media coverage by the Recorder and local radio to amplify the political damage. For WCSS, a ‘win-win’ all around.

Let me pose the question a different way: I know the identity of an anonymous public official who made insulting and offensive comments; am I justified releasing their name? (not that I will) If said person was on the opposite side of your political party — you choose– would you support WCSS and the Recorder in running the story? What standard do you use to ‘draw the line’ of disclosing identities? For local media covering this story, what level of commentary rises to the level of compelling public interest to disclose? And on  and on….

Here my questions sit, cold, alone and unanswered still:

- Was shadycat’s identity revealed by the blog administrator or host? If so, to whom was that information revealed?

-Does shadycat’s characterization of South Side residents justify a public disclosure of comments made anonymously? If so, must we then disclose the identity of anonymous blog posters whose comments we find insulting or distasteful?

-Will public disclosure of anonymous commenters only apply to the Web or does the same standard apply to radio callers?

-Will WCSS adopt similar tools for their anonymous callers such as caller ID to  discover their identity ? Does WCSS employ caller ID  for their radio shows? Does WCSS keep a record of such calls and callers? How about WVTL as well?

-What privacy policies do local radio stations adopt for their anonymous callers? And other blogs?