First they came for the bandwidth soakers, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a bandwidth soaker

ShareThis

After reading the article, it looks like Rainey gave the blog/website a C, recognizing that it has broken a few stories but also lacks in-depth investigative pieces.

ShareThis

“Almost everyone forgets a Web site password once in a while. When you do, you click on the familiar Forgot your password? link. As an experiment, Thompson recently asked a few friends for permission to “hack” into their bank accounts. Using only information gathered from Web sites such as Facebook, he found his way in to each account within minutes”

ShareThis

The dumbest quote from the ad: “He says he’ll play nicey nice with Islamic militants who want to kill Americans at home and abroad.” Much of what the woman in the ad says are recycled Republican talking points that wore thin 6 months ago (Rezco, Obama is an Islamoterrorist, flip flopper), but the Clinton footage certainly packs a punch.

Of course there is no shortage of prominent Republicans that have said bad things about McCain; Will Democrats start running audio footage of James Dobson bashing McCain in order to chip away at his Christian base?

ShareThis

Well while I was over there today I came across a post titled “Applying for a Blogger Job? Treat it Seriously,” written by none other than the pro blogger himself, Darren Rowse.

“Today I received an email from one of the advertisers on the ProBlogger Job Boards,” he wrote. “They reflected back to me that they’d had a lot of ‘low quality’ job applications and made some suggestions for those looking to apply for a blogger job.”

A lot of low quality applications? How could this be? I mean, just look at these quotes from five pro blogger job listings that I picked at random:

1. IF WE GET PAID, YOU GET PAID MORE: Yep, it’s true, once you start getting traffic you’ll notice that you’re actually making some money from the various ad networks(AdSense, Kontera, etc.) that you add to your HubPages account. The cool thing is that you will make 60% or all generated ad revenue and we’ll make our 40% after that.

2. Writers start at $15 per article, with a $100 traffic bonus for the most popular article each month. You need to be able to contribute a minimum of 2 posts per month, but can contribute up to 2 posts a week if you have the time and enough funny stuff to say. [Simon: Two posts a week? You mean I can make as much as $30 a week????]

3. You can also write content 5 dollars and up per article if accepted. We pay a (5.00 referral fee) fee per blog so if You have another blog promote you can program and receive 5.00 per member If your tired of networks that don’t share the Revenue.Come over today and triple your earnings. Free shirt when you open a free account on Today.com

4. We pay anywhere between $5 - $75 a post depending on your experience writing, access to sources and breaking news, viral exposure (digg front page, news sources, etc) and length or post. We take pride in paying our writers on a weekly basis.

5. For starters, remuneration will be in the form of Google Adsense sharing with bonuses for exemplary performance. As the site builds up and advertising revenues increase, other reward options will be made available. This is a fresh new site.

Looks like you’ll have just as much a chance of becoming a full-time blogger as you’d have becoming a full-time poet or making a living participating in a pyramid scheme.

ShareThis

So as I mentioned previously I’m starting my new job as an online analyst at New Media Strategies on Sept. 10. The downside of this is the fact that I’m missing out on all the kick ass stuff they’re doing at the two party conventions. As I write this, a few of my coworkers are at the Pepsi Center with credentialed blogger passes.

I’m also having to miss out on the work they’re doing with C-SPAN. They’ve created an entire convention hub for both Democrats and Republicans. Over the next two weeks my future coworkers are providing around-the-clock coverage of the blogosphere, particularly focusing in on those blogs that are covering the conventions. The Hub also includes Twitter feeds and NMS employees are on the ground at the conventions themselves in order to facilitate the coverage.

William Beutler has a good summary of what they’re doing and the hub has also been picked up by TechCrunch and several other major sites.

But I still have to wait two more weeks before I can join in on the action. By then, the conventions will be long over with.

ShareThis

For all you naysayers, I give you this report from Glenn Greenwald.

ShareThis