I guess this calls for a ‘zed’.

So, what’s the status of the Oxcart Express, er, Oxdown?

Sorry Dave, not liking the persistently heavy hand in the evening. Love Ian but can deal with that stuff better in the afternoon. Personal need to lighten up come evening time or I get too many nightmares. Part of the problem is the time zone thing too. Will probably be spending less time here.

Part of what got me hooked on the blogs, and FDL especially, was the fact that with all of the wretched stuff going on in the world, the folks here were fighting it with a strong sense of snark. I could get comic relief WITH activism. Now it’s just darker and darker and I’m getting too depressed hanging out at the Lake.

YMMV.

Oh, and the posts are now coming way too fast to keep up—like a conversation that jumps topics so quickly that you never get to finish a thought.

Sounds like it works for me. I esp. like the added space for breaking/current news. Thanks for your work…that’s for the whole line up. Clearly alot goes into all of this. My best.

You been reading my mind again, Deb? Ditto on yr. #4.
Thank you for voicing what I’m too sleepy & inarticulate to be able to yet this a.m.

(((((((RevDeb)))))))

FWIW, RevDeb, we will be ending our days, especially in the Late Nite slots, with a lighter touch — the usual arts and OT frivolity. But we still want to give our readers some meaty posts in the afternoons and evenings, when we’ve found they get better audiences than they do in the mornings.

WRT the rapid fire: We had a week a couple of weeks back where we tried an experiment in which we limited all the front-page posts to 100 words. Mostly it was an attempt to encourage the contributors to work at finding ways to be more succinct. But it also produced very rapid turnover with the posts, and people did find it hard to join the conversations. So our mornings will be faster paced but hopefully not quite that fast.

I agree with you, RevDeb. I already come here less frequently, no longer read all of the comments, rarely visit the “companion” blogs (they’re good, but there simply isn’t time). There are other places I can get fast-paced breaking news (Huffington, TPM). I liked the pace of the “old” FDL and the ability to read and reflect on the posts and comments before everyone rushed “upstairs” to the next post.

FDL has become like one of those big all-you-can-eat buffets, where you can pick among the offerings and select only what you like. Except that most people don’t want to eat at those places several times a day.

David,
Where will Scarecrow be? I’ve always appreciated his level-headed, polite, thoughtful approach to morning articles.

Also, I too was at first put off by the rapid fire posts. However, it became apparent that people weren’t obligated to leave ongoing discussions and go to the next post immediately.

Didn’t like the rapid short posts. I assumed you were doing it because of server problems and it would pass.

I come here for great analysis not short thoughts. For that we have Atrios. To me it’s a waste of talent of the fine writers we have here.

Scarecrow will be helping to anchor our afternoon work. I agree that he’s one of our finest writers. We just found he wasn’t getting the audience he should in the mornings.

We’ve found that the vast majority of blog readers tend to be looking for quick hits in the mornings — doing news scans, essentially — and will sit down and read longer posts later in the afternoon. So this schedule is an attempt to meet that preference.

Yeah, I’m going to miss Scarecrow in the mornings, he and Christy — I cured my insomnia by ALWAYS being here for their posts, wouldn’t miss one. Took m awhile to get used to later Christys

But if Scarecrow gets more readers (and more commenters) in a later time slot, that’s a very good thing; more people need to read his wisdom. I love the clarity of his writing, always makes the hard stuff so easy to understand. Plus, like Christy, his participation in the comments makes the posts imo

Morning, David.

Well, we’re going to work hard to make sure the writers do participate in the comments as much as possible.

And I hope you all realize one thing this shift does mean … More Jane.

You say that like it’s a good thing.

It is!!

Been missing you Jane. Especially your sense of humor and biting attacks against the stoopid. I’m missing the old FDL more and more every day.

May I suggest a blog roll of our writers most recent posts.

This fits my reading schedule.

I note that commenters at emptywheel keep substantive threads going until they have wrung everything out of them. I keep a couple of tabs open on the ones that interest me so I can follow along on those.

(bows) Konnichiwa, Lady Jane

Always an honour to have you here.

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

Well, alright then. I guess I can start hitting the sack at 4 A.M. and getting up at noon. Retirement is great. :)

Hey Dave, thanks for the heads up. I like the approach, which has always characterized FDL: keep moving, try new stuff, take care of your most important resources, which are Jane and all the great writers.

Put me down as one of those who likes the short, newsy posts, but I realize a lot of other FDLers don’t share that. I like to be fluent about politics and FDL keeps me fluent. I also like the in-depth posts, but I frequently don’t have time to read all of them.

I remember when Jane and ReddHedd wrote all the posts here seven days a week. I loved it, but I knew that wasn’t sustainable. Trust is a big part of what makes FDL work and it’s important to me that the direction has Jane’s stamp. I also understand that she’s an unbelieveable resource and is pulled in many directions.

One of the many things I have liked about Jane’s approach was that she was trying to make sure she could pay for talent. That’s the engine that drives sustainability. As Jane knows, I really thank God (Science nature, fate insert whatever you want) for this place. I think many of us have not a clue how much work it takes to keep a political blog popular, and “cool,” and accurate and funny and all the other things that comprise the value matrix that draws the eyeballs of so many wonderful commenters.

The site is great, the writers are all great, whatever you want to do is fine with me. Changes are unsettling to some, but it keeps things fresh.

since you asked….

i do my own news scans and i don’t think i’m alone in that because of the links i find here in the comments. also i do my news scans in the am (i wonder how many other readers here do the same?) so having short newsie pieces in the am is not so useful to me especially if it’s primarily based on the big news sources we probably will see anyway. i guess it depends on who your target audience is.

also, breaking news does not tend to happen in the morning.

my preference is for analytical pieces in the mornings (but only after i’ve had some coffee) when i’m mentally fresh. love attaturk in the very early mornings. afternoon would be imo, best for shorter news pieces if you must and light posts in the pm. really miss late nites as late-late nite is usually too late for me. maybe it’s just be an east coast thing.

on tuesdays, wednesdays and thursdays (when congress is in session) i enjoy c-span watching (and congressional hearing webstreams) with other fdl commenters. in any event, so long as we’re still allowed to go OT (except for book salon, etc of course) i’m not sure it matters all that much.

good luck with your shuffling.

David, I have respected your work at Orcinus. That said, I read with some trepidation your plans for FDL. I have come to FDL since its inception for in-depth analysis and though-provoking commentary, not for short takes, “breaking news” handled breezily, and so forth.

Breaking news is admirably handled by Truthout and by Buzz Flash, among many other sites. I fear that you are diluting the strengths of FDL in order to pander to a presumed further demographic.

There is a pervasive take that the public cannot countenance too much, if indeed, any in-depth analysis, and you seem to have swallowed this pill in your plans for FDL. Morning, noon, night, and overnight, I have been reading FDL with great attention and profit. It is nonsense to say that this valuable demographic I represent cannot take serious thinking in the mornings, nor the stress and strain of realpolitik in the early evenings.

Reconsider.

I do not like the path you appear to be pursuing and I opine that it will ruin the FDL upon which we have come to rely.

We’ve found that the vast majority of blog readers tend to be looking for quick hits in the mornings — doing news scans, essentially — and will sit down and read longer posts later in the afternoon.

curious to know how you determined that?

we limited all the front-page posts to 100 words

And that was an insult to my intelligence!

FDL seemed to be an oasis immune from this dumbing down. And you, David, of all people!

For shame, David, for very shame!

Ms Molly, I do not recognize your handle, but I wish I had seen rather more of you at FDL because you have articulated my angst at the proposed dumbing down of FDL–articulated it extremely well indeed.

p.s. appreciate very, very much the heads up. hate when big changes occur only when there is no mention of them.

I come here for great analysis not short thoughts. For that we have Atrios. To me it’s a waste of talent of the fine writers we have here.

Damn straight, RevDeb–as you usually are. I am appalled at what these changes seem to portend for my beloved FDL, and for the nurture and feeding of our intellectual and mutual lives here at FDL.

YESSS! David. What wtlloyd said!

This is already THE go-to site on the toobz, and everything you mention sounds well worth the wait and coping with unsettled hamsters, however long it takes.

These new changes should be absolutely golden for on-the-fly campaigning.
Thank you!

I found myself campaigning on a whim with passers-by along our roadside twice this week.

We have a nice conversation starter in the front yard (same one as our next-door neighbor): an Obama sign that’s been up for months now – it’s a little tattered from someone’s attempt to destroy it early on. No one’s touched it since, and they’d best not if they don’t want pine-pitch all over their hands and a brick-sized lump on their head. All’s fair, the bricks are in plain sight and self-launching if someone yanks the sign. Don’t mess with this innocent-looking old biddy.

I don’t start it, but if someone cranks up into a whine at me over almost any current world problem, I point to the sign and briefly explain that [whatever they said] is one of the reasons why we’re voting for Obama. Almost everyone I’ve talked to wants to hear more (woot!). It is also surprisingly effective if a white-haired gal of a certain age stands there and tells even the toughest-looking customer that mccaint’s too old to be president, doesn’t even make sense, can barely remember his own name without a teleprompter and was mean-spirited back when he could, is highly suspected of bedding with the awl companies, yadda yadda.

I take no prisoners. They start it. So far it always ends with a smile on both our faces, and an implied firm resolve to vote by the other fella. heh. ;->

P. E. A. C. E.

I must be missing something. Can’t all you complainers upthread go ahead and read the in depth articles whenever you have time during your day to sit for awhile and cogitate? That’s what I do. It’s not as if FDL is yanking them. They’ll still be there. eh?

In my free-style campaigning, I find it very helpful to be absolutely up-to-date with my information. Most of my contacts don’t use the net for their news, but the ones that do are always intrigued and impressed by FDL.

If the new style approach doesn’t work, I suspect it’ll be tweaked or dropped altogether. Unless I slept through it, I did not see any mention of intense coverage of the Britneys et al.

I’m gonna stay calm and see how it works out. Must be gitten too old to get fightin’ mad at every bloomin’ thing that passes by my nose.

Bravo for the effort, David. Let’s fire it up and see how it goes. ;->

sounds good to meeeeeee.
You are SUCH an asset at FDL, David.
I appreciate and thank you for your contribution as well as this “heads up”.
The best blog on teh toobz just got better. Again.
:)

And you, David, of all people! For shame, David, for very shame!

Oh REALLY!?! *snerk*

Try to remain standing tall, David. This, too, shall pass. heh.

my goodness gracious…..

and YAY! More Jane!
I love the info and writers here, but Jane’s posts are just still my favorites. Her style is knock out accurate and original, often hysterically funny, and her take on things always amazes me with the “Why didn’t I think of that??!”s.
hehe
GOOD to see more Jane.
:)

David, I am glad that there has been some thoughtful response to the ‘changes’ (inevitable, one suspects, as opposed to proposed) and I do wonder how you determined what the ‘vast majority’ apparently ‘want’.

That said, and knowing that the ‘usual suspects’ tend to be willing to ’share’ their views, I have but one question.

In future, how important do you think the commenters and their ‘perspectives’ REALLY shall be, in terms of FDL’ ‘purpose’?

Also, I echo selise in thanking you for letting us know, ahead of time, rather than leaving us to ‘figure’ it out, fait accompli.

Hey Dawgies!

Seriously. I’d appreciate hearing what the websites are that you newshounds most admire. This is no joke. I’d been visiting HuffPo daily, but I’m getting tired of wading thru the added piles of sludge there.

Could some of you share your favorite quick-take news sites for an old lady?
Purty please?! Thanking u in advance. ;->

Good Morning, Adie. I’m with you. Aw, dawgies.
Buzzflash has a good liberal-lefty news voice.
Also, for my two cents in this, I think change is usually for the good. I trust that Jane (et al) is not going to stick with something that doesn’t work. They will iron this out.
Also, I must say that I’m looking forward to how the commenters at different times of the day will shake out. It has seemed to me that it has gotten more and more clickish here. That’s just my purview, and certainly not based on anything “real” – ha. Certain times of the day seems to attract more or fewer welcoming or openness to certain of us folks with comments.

Re:

WRT the rapid fire: We had a week a couple of weeks back where we tried an experiment in which we limited all the front-page posts to 100 words. Mostly it was an attempt to encourage the contributors to work at finding ways to be more succinct. But it also produced very rapid turnover with the posts, and people did find it hard to join the conversations. So our mornings will be faster paced but hopefully not quite that fast.

Other than a time zone difference of a quarter to a third of a day in advance of yours, you should know that these eyes have never rested on USA Today, ever. Please keep this in mind in your arranging this site. The best writing and presentation of facts, knowledge, complexity, considerations, and a lot of thoughtfulness is not best put forth in “blurbs”. Take a look at MSM and you will see the point. “Blurbs” do not serve the memory well either, they are quickly forgotten, (American History must be presented in this fashion, so little is recalled). doG willing, I will never see USA Today or its kind in the balance of my days, don’t become like them. Please.

All the best……..

Adie, have a look at Truthout:http://www.truthout.org/; The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/

although david did not say it was the case, i expect that this change is being driven by the desire to maximize page views and therefore ad revenue. which, if true, is of course quite understandable for this business model.

and we (thanks jane!) will have oxdown – so if we want more longer analytical pieces, i guess it will be up to us to write them.

that said, in support of those who’ve opined against the shorter less analytical posts in the morning i offer this bit from chomsky… that i was recently motivated to go look up (actually by the week of short posts).

The quote is from a foot note in Understanding Power. Chomsky calls the M$M’s requirement for concision a technique of thought control.

The movie includes the following interchange on “concision” from an interview with the producer of the current-affairs T.V. program Nightline, Jeff Greenfield, conducted by Jeff Hanson of W.O.R.T. Community Radio in Madison, WI:

HANSON: What about just in the selection of guests to analyze things. Why is Noam Chomsky never on Nightline?

GREENFIELD: I couldn’t begin to tell you.

HANSON: He’s one of the leading intellectuals in the entire world.

GREENFIELD: I have no idea. I mean, I can make some guesses. He may be one of the leading intellectuals who can’t talk on television. You know, that’s a standard that’s very important to us. If you’ve got a 22 minute show, and a guy takes five minutes to warm up — now I don’t know whether Chomsky does or not — he’s out. One of the reasons why Nightline has the “usual suspects” [a reference to the media-monitoring group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s study of the program’s guest-list, “All the Usual Suspects: McNeil-Lehrer and Nightline”] is that one of the things you have to do when you book a show is know that the person can make the point within the framework of television. And if people don’t like that, they should understand that it’s about as sensible to book somebody who will take eight minutes to give an answer as it is to book somebody who doesn’t speak English. But in the normal give and flow, that’s another culture-bound thing: we’ve got to have English-speaking people. We also need concision.

[The film then cuts to Chomsky speaking at Georgetown University, commenting:]

CHOMSKY: So Greenfield or whatever his name is hit the nail on the head. The U.S. media are alone in that you must meet the condition of “concision” — you’ve got to say things between two commercials or in 600 words. And that’s a very important fact, because the beauty of concision — you know, saying a couple of sentences between 2 commercials — the beauty of that is you can only repeat conventional thoughts. . . .

Suppose I get up on Nightline, I’m given whatever it is, two minutes, and I say Qaddafi is a terrorist and Khomeini is a murderer, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, all this sort of stuff — I don’t need any evidence, everybody just nods. On the other hand, suppose you say something that just isn’t repeating conventional pieties. Suppose you say something that’s the least bit unexpected or controversial. Suppose you say, “The biggest international terror operations that are known are the ones that are run out of Washington.” [The film then cuts to a series of such statements, spoken at different locations.] Suppose you say, “What happened in the 1980s is the U.S. government was driven underground.” Suppose I say, “The United States is invading South Vietnam” — as it was. “The best political leaders are the ones who are lazy and corrupt.” “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American President would have been hanged.” “The Bible is probably the most genocidal book in our total canon.” “Education is a system of imposed ignorance.” “There’s no more morality in world affairs, fundamentally, than there was at the time of Ghengis Kahn, there are just different factors to be concerned with.”

You know, people will quite reasonably expect to know what you mean. Why did you say that? I never heard that before. If you said that you better have a reason, you better have some evidence, and in fact you better have a lot of evidence, because that’s a pretty startling comment. You can’t give evidence if you’re stuck with concision. That’s the genius of this structural constraint.

Also, I must say that I’m looking forward to how the commenters at different times of the day will shake out. It has seemed to me that it has gotten more and more clickish here.

Agree with this. Always a challenge to maintain an online community longterm without it turning into a total echo chamber.

Enjoy reading FDL, but have found a decline in the average diversity (if not the quality) of comments over the past year.

Think the changes may help in that regard, even if they disquiet those commenters that have become accustomed to dominating the conversation.

Have at ‘er Dave!

Thanks much! I’m pretty fed up with HuffPo. And altho I love FDL for what it’s best at, there are always those times when one only has a sec. or 2 to double check the veracity of a particular item.

One of our sons is a truly gifted ‘puter geek. It’s great fun to be up to speed with him and his infernal blackberry, heh. But mostly, I need iron-clad reliability as well as speed. With my issue-oriented kind of compaigning, I can’t afford to be wrong, ever, without serious cause.
My contacts expect to be able to trust whatever I pass along to them. It’s funny that many times, I pass on stuff that party insiders don’t yet know.
yee haw. ahem. ;->

selise;

It is precisey (and concisely) owing to comments such as this, involved, provoking thought, encourage broad perspective (etc.etc.), that you are among my favorites of the ‘usual suspects’, and whilst I admire and respect the headliners, one and all, it is the quality of the commenter’s comments which set FDL apart from all the rest …

I know I am not alone in this view.

So, to ALL who make FDL what it is, what it has been and what it shall hopefully continue to be, for all human beings who genuinely ‘care’, I offer my profound, heartfelt Thank you.

Great quote from Chomsky that I hadn’t seen before. Really interesting insight into the structural role of concision in reinforcing conventional wisdom.

Thanks for providing it.

And a hearty Good Morning to you to!

Our smartypants son swears by Buzzflash also. I should listen to you two, heh. I KNOW it’s there. I was just stuck in a rut. Thanks for the much-needed push.

clickish? oh perish the thot! hee hee. That will always be – everywhere – i fear. I just wade in anyway. If they want to listen or ignore, fine. Sometimes I’m even ON topic, heh. Sometimes “they’re” way off base and a bit over-strong in the trombone section. We’re a symphony, tra la.

Jane and crew have a deft and elegant touch at conducting the show. Let’s let them tinker. Who better to trust?!

thanks dw, and back at you too.

db11, if you want more, you might be interested in “manufacturing consent” – if not the book, then at least the movie.

addendum: confession time. I have an absolutely awful time keeping myself from trying to tease the wrinkles out of stuffed shirts.

Please consider yourself empowered to help me mind my manners whenever you see fit.

Seriously, I actually “failed” Brownies as a little kid. Sometimes a gentle, guiding hand is appreciated. I got older but never grew up, as it were.
We kids will save the world from the boosh/cheeney monstah. We’ve done it before. We can do it again, although the fact that it’s necessary is infuriating. Stubborn is a good thing.

P.E.A.C.E., Good Friend.

One thing I do like is that you are also going to concentrate on weekend reporting. They SAY that Friday is Dump Time for important news they want to “announce” but in reality they want it to hide under the radar. Well perhaps Firepups can change that and make these people hit their head in frustration and WISH they had paid more attention. It might even be interesting to have at least one early morning weekend place especially for The Friday Toxic Dump site, just a suggestion …

My 2 cents

Cat In Seattle

Excellent suggestion, mntleo2.

And, well in keeping with the stellar heritage of daring and tenacity for which FDL is known and appreciated.

Good on ya!

;~D

Adie – I don’t need to remind you of your manners. You Have Manners. You have a voice and you are a faithful person.
I’ve been here for a fairly long time and consider you a true friend.
A mind. A voice. A heart. You have them all!
(and, a fabulous yard.)

I second that. Want to add that GRITv is very well done, with Laura being a most an excellent host, smart and thoughtful.

Actually, I understand. I was, some of you may recall, one of the people who broke the taboo on using long form writing early on in the blogosphere and demonstrated that there was a demand for meaty posts.

But good writing is disciplined writing and I for one found it tremendously useful for me as a writer to be writing short and concise posts. It helps me pack more into my longer posts, for one thing …

Thanks for this, Selise!

More and more I seek out your comments. Of course there is a reason for this, and this post is exemplary.

Jane and crew have a deft and elegant touch at conducting the show.

Well, there is no gainsaying that. But I fear that FDL has become much bigger than its founders and that the market is intruding to our possible probable detriment.

In Re: Saturday morning thread on Friday news dumps.
Darn good idea. Hope to see it come to fruition! And thanks.

Exactly where I am. First I hit HuffPo, from there go to NYT and WaPo, then Think Progress and TPM before coming to FDL. I’m guessing most of us want total news first thing in the morning. The pups (love Marion) give us great links to the best articles, but it’s not as quick a source.

This is a really good move because I would rather look at Scarecrow and Christy when I have time to read the links. (Some posts have too many links.) Best 5 would be good…

I’d love to have FDL be my main stop as HuffPo is now because of her blog roll. Also, since you’re asking? Please don’t ever be like HuffPo in having headlines that have little or nothing to do with the story. Jez the fax.

Thanks for indulging me!

Adie, I got kicked out of the girl scouts in sixth grade because I couldn’t stop laughing. The leader wore white lipstick and played bongo drums.

I loved it, but she thought I was being disrespectful because I got a case of the funnies.

A few months later, I started the neighborhood Beatnik club. We went to the house down the street where they played the music and joined in. Smelled kinda funny.