Highlights from FinCon 2012

Defining your purpose with why, how, and what I’m in the air, somewhere over Michigan, on my way from Denver to New York City (and then on to Istanbul). I spent the past four days in Colorado at FinCon 2012, the second annual Financial Blogger Conference.

In the past, I would have written a conference summary that highlighted all of the key insights I gleaned over the weekend. I don’t have to do that anymore. Instead, I can focus on how much fun I had seeing old friends and making new ones.

Each time I attend a blogging conference, it’s an intense experience. I’m “on” from the moment I reach the hotel until the moment I leave. This time, I was “on” even longer.

When I boarded the shuttle from the airport on Thursday afternoon, I sat next to Linsey Knerl (from 1099 Mom). She and I (and two other bloggers in the van) chatted the whole way to the hotel. On the early Monday morning shuttle back to the airport, I rode with Andrea and Shannyn and Sarah. From van ride to van ride, I was in constant Social Mode with very little sleep. It was overwhelming — but awesome.

“You’ve changed. You look good.” — Linsey Knerl‘s funny “compliment” to me on the shuttle to the hotel

Friends and Colleagues

My favorite part of blogging conferences is connecting with my friends and colleagues. I’ve “known” some of these financial bloggers for almost seven years, but we rarely have a chance to connect in person.

Ramit won't eat sno-balls, not even for money I went to lunch with Jim and Luke on Saturday. There, we hatched a possible business collaboration. Could the three of us become business partners? Possibly! We’ve worked loosely together in the past (and Jim and I even partnered on the Personal Finance Hour podcast), but never had a formal business relationship. That may change in the future.

As always, I spent time with Adam Baker, who may be my best friend among this community. He and I and Ramit spent some time talking about the past, present, and future of blogging, and about what each of us hopes to accomplish in the days ahead. I tried to convince Ramit to eat some Hostess sno-balls, but he wouldn’t do it — not even for twenty bucks. That’s some discipline!

In what is becoming an annual tradition, Kylie Ofiu and I escaped from the crowd for a quiet dinner alone. Kylie’s a sharp young entrepreneur from Australia. Our backgrounds are similar, so it’s interesting to compare notes.

I liked the three metal bracelets Kylie Ofiu was wearing. Each was engraved with one of her favorite sayings:

“Luck is where opportunity meets preparation.”
“What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”
“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”

Kylie Ofiu has engraved her favorite quotes on a series of bracelets

I also took time to meet with Pete, who goes by the moniker Mr. Money Mustache. He has a hot early retirement blog, and for good reason. He offers solid advice in a strong personal voice. I loved his presentation at FinCon; his blogging philosophy and mine are closely aligned.

Mr. Money Mustache gives a presentation at FINCON 2012

Mr. Money Mustache gives his presentation at FinCon 2012

I had a chance to chat with lots of other financial bloggers, as well. Neal Frankle and I had several long, interesting conversations. I’m half tempted to leave Turkey early so that I can visit him and his family in Israel.

“People lock themselves in their own prison…If you don’t live with gratitude, you’ll always be poor. You will always be in poverty.” — Neal Frankle, on being grateful for what you have

Ryan was again a great source of inspiration. Last year, he shared a Spanish proverb (“no hay mal que por bien no venga“, which loosely translates as “every cloud has a silver lining”), which had a profound impact on my life. This year, he was again a well of knowledge, teaching me about everything from Turkish tourist spots to blog optimization to simple, tasty breakfasts.

Recipe! Here’s one of Ryan’s favorite breakfasts, one I’ll be sure to try: Fry some chunks of pepper bacon in melted butter. Add shredded parmesan. After the parmesan gets crispy, add eggs and scramble. Serve over sourdough toast..

I didn’t just reconnect with old friends. I made some new ones too. I met dozens of other bloggers, such as Adam, Corey, Karen. I especially enjoyed chatting with Paula from Afford Anything and Shannyn from Frugal Beautiful. I also got to meet my stalker from FinCon 2011, Andrea from So Over This.

The Future of Financial Blogging

J.D. in the channel 9 newsroom The conference wasn’t all fun and games, of course.

I spent a lot of my time meeting with representatives from financial services companies like USAA and T. Rowe Price and Ally Bank. I listened to pitches from companies with interesting financial apps, companies like RetailMeNot and Budgetable. I did two television interviews.

Plus, I attended a number of lectures and workshops. I appreciated Adam Baker’s thoughtful opening keynote that encouraged us to identify our “why” before trying to find our “how” or “what”, Linsey Knerl’s presentation on connecting with mainstream media, and Mr. Money Mustache’s instructions on how to build a cult-like following.

“Everyone dies in the middle of their lives.” — Adam Baker, about how nobody expects the end of their lives to be the end — they still feel as if there’s more of their story to be told

Some of the most fun I had was during the “How I Built My Million Dollar” blog panel with Jim, Luke, and Will. We got to sit on stage for an hour, fielding questions from other bloggers about the business of blogging. I get a kick out of sharing what I know with other people, and it was especially fun to hear how the four of us had different ideas and opinions.

Kelly Whalen puts a question to the “all-star panel” at FinCon 2012

Last year, I gave the opening keynote to FinCon 2011. Most attendees remember the speech because, in order to make a point, I recruited my friend Benny Lewis to storm the stage dressed as a Klingon (complete with bat’leth!) This year, I gave the closing keynote, and it wasn’t nearly as exciting.

My talk was on the community and the future of financial blogging. Rather than ramble on about my own half-baked notions, I recruited eight of my fellow bloggers to join me on stage one at a time to share their views.

J.D. interviews Flexo about the blogging community at FinCon 2012

Perhaps my favorite part of the whole talk was being able to introduce Karawynn from Pocketmint to a larger audience. Karawynn’s the reason I’m a blogger. I first found her online journal back in 1997, and it inspired me to start one of my own. Then, a decade later, she contacted me because she was starting a personal finance blog. She had inspired me, and now I was inspiring her. Love it.

FinCon 2013

Though I’ve retired from Get Rich Slowly, I’ll be at FinCon 2013. For one thing, I’ll be writing about money here now and then. For another, I’m about to resume my duties at Time‘s Moneyland blog. And, most of all, I want to see my friends and colleagues once more.

Others seem to feel the same way. In fact, I’ve managed to make plans to see some of these folks again on this long trip. When I return from Istanbul to New York City in early October, Luke and I plan to see a show on Broadway. After that, I’ll fly for a speaking engagement in Atlanta, where I hope to have dinner with Paula. And when I make it to San Francisco, I intend to meet with a couple of the companies that talked to me this weekend.

But now? Now it’s time to set business aside. This plane has almost reached JFK. For the next three weeks, I’m going to forget about financial blogging and focus on fun. Next stop: Istanbul!

A Trio of Bakers (plus Overcome by Cute!)

I’m a tired man. Adam and Courtney Baker rolled into town last week. They parked their RV on our front lawn, and I’ve been hanging around with them ever since — going out to eat, talking about blogging, and staying up late to play board games. It’s awesome — for me, at least. (I can’t speak for Adam, Courtney, or Kris.)

Baker's RV parked in front of Rosing Park

Baker’s RV, Kris’ flower garden, and the ever-present Oregon rain.

Adam and Courtney have been driving across the U.S. in their RV since January. They started in Baltimore, and have made a U-shaped traverse of the country, coming up the West Coast during the month of May. They’re not alone. They also brought their three-year-old daughter, Milligan, who is as cute as a bug’s ear.

At dinner, Milli tells me how old she is. That muffin is nearly as big as her head.

All parents think their kids are cute and smart and wonderful. But Milli actually is cute. I think she’s adorable. Plus, because she spends so much time with adults, she does a good job of interacting with them. She’s still three, of course, but she’s a precocious three. She’s smart and friendly and funny.

She’s also cuddly at times. Here, she’s giving Kris some spontaneous snuggling:

I spend a lot of time with Kris (which is good, since she’s my best friend and my wife!), but I don’t get to hang out with my other friends very often, except at the gym. It’s been far too long since I’ve been able to linger with anyone, playing games, going to lunch, and so on. But that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few days, and I’ve really enjoyed it.

Thankfully, Adam and I are working in separate spaces today, which means we’re able to be productive. (I am, anyhow.) But I look forward to playing games with the Bakers again soon: Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Dominion, and more! And I look forward to mingling with Milligan.

A Brief Message is Better Than No Message

Recently, I met Charlie Gilkey for lunch at Jade Teahouse. Over noodles and vietnamese stew, we talked about blogging. (Charlie runs a site called Productive Flourishing, which contains “strategies for thriving in life and business”.) And we talked about e-mail.

Junk food may be one of my biggest weaknesses, but e-mail is nearly as bad. I get a lot of e-mail, and I do a poor job of processing it. I try to reply immediately to friends and family, but it usually takes me far too long to reply to everyone else, even when the messages are important.

As I described this weakness to Charlie, he was sympathetic. I told him how I’d watched Chris Guillebeau blitz through e-mail during our cross-country train trip in April. Chris is a master of efficiency (thanks in part to Text Expander, which allows him to type “/WDSreply” and immediately get a prepared three-paragraph reply).

Charlie gave me some quick tips for handling e-mail, including:

Use filters. I already filter many of my messages. Get Rich Slowly e-mail is routed to its own box. Comic book e-mail is routed to its own box. All of the e-mail for Kris’s liberal causes is routed to its own box. (Or, in the case of MoveOn.org, directly to spam.)

If you open it, act on it. Instead of opening a message and then hemming and hawing about it for the next few days, act on it immediately. If it requires work, put it in a separate folder. But if it gets opened, it gets pulled from the inbox.

And, most of all, make e-mail responses brief. Except when rambling to friends (like when I’m writing to Mac and Pam about running, for example, or when I’m writing to the geeks about Tron), the best way to expedite e-mail is to write short, meaningful replies.

As an example of how Charlie implements that last rule, take a look at this post, in which he explains why he writes brief e-mails. (He links to this post from the signature of every e-mail he sends.) After our lunch, he wrote an expanded explanation of his method.

To quote Charlie:

My brief email message is just me…ensuring that I don’t bottleneck the conversation. I’m happy to have deeper and extended conversations with you, and you aren’t something I’m trying to get out of my Inbox. Please continue the conversation if it’s appropriate, and feel free to write in whatever length and style that feels comfortable for you. I don’t want my anti-bottlenecking practice to bottleneck you.

All of this is to say, I’m moving to the brief e-mail model. I’m going to do my best to give folks timely replies to their e-mail, but my responses may be short. It’s not because I don’t care, but because I do care.

To Blog or Not to Blog

Man, I’m wishy-washy sometimes. “I’m going to re-boot Animal Intelligence!” “Wait, no I’m not!” “I’m going to start a blog about awesome people!” “Wait, no I’m not!” Etcetera. Etcetera.

After talking with Kris and Paul Jolstead, however, and after thinking about what my life goals are, I’m coming down on the “No I’m not” side of things again. Besides, I’m having a lot of fun doing and writing about lots of different stuff. I might as well be sharing it here.

Sometimes I get discouraged that the readership at Foldedspace has dwindled to nothing, but what can I expect? Yes, this site used to get 40,000 visitors a month, but that’s back before I had a money blog, back when I was posting every day. And it took me five years to reach that level.

Nowadays, Foldedspace is lucky to get 4,000 visits per month, but maybe if I spend some time actually, you know, writing here, I can bring those numbers up. What do you say we give it a shot? Maybe in five years, I can be back to the 40,000 visits a month I used to have.

So, here are my goals for this site:

I want to move all of the old, archived entries from the previous site over here, either with or without comments. (I prefer “with”, of course.) I think my soon-to-be brother-in-law has agreed to help me write a script to parse the old posts. (If that’s not true, Paul, just say so.)

I want to write more about my daily life. Most of it’s boring — “I worked out at Crossfit, I went to the office and wrote all day, I watched Glee with Kris” — but there’s still some fun stuff that happens from time to time.

I want to take all of these billions of blog ideas I have, and just write about those topics here. Comics? Here. Animal intelligence? Here. Awesome people? Here. Basically, Foldedspace can once again be a place where I write about my many passions.

I know I’ve made several false starts to resume regular blogging here, but I do hope this time will be different. I just have to remind myself that even if nobody else seems to be reading, at least I’m having fun.

I used to write for this site as if nobody were reading it. Lately, I’ve been writing as if everyone were reading it. Doing the latter makes me feel cramped. I’m going to let loose, I think, and just be myself. If that pisses some people off, so be it. And if others are bored by the cats and comic books, that’s fine too. I’ll just make this a blog that I want to read.

My Life as a Blogger

I’m in Breckenridge, Colorado this weekend, high in the Rocky Mountains. I’m presenting at the Savvy Blogging Summit, which is a gathering of ~65 amazing women bloggers (and Alex, the token man). I’m honored to have been asked to present on Building Community and Effective Monetization. I also gave the keynote talk last night, and though such a thing is far outside my comfort zone, I had fun. Here’s the written version of the talk (which is a bit different than the version I gave).

I started my first blog on 16 August 1997. I didn’t call it a blog — that word hadn’t been invented yet — I called it a web journal. I’d been reading other web journals for about a year, and I’d had a personal web page since 1994. Because I was a young man who wanted to be a writer, and because I was a young man who loved computers, starting a web journal seemed to make perfect sense.

The Olden Days

For two years, I participated in what is now a sort of blogging joke: I wrote about what I ate for lunch. And for dinner. And for breakfast. I used my web journal to track my fitness. Then, as now, I struggled with my weight, and I figured a web journal might provide some accountability. It worked. Even though my web journal only had a handful of readers, they’d e-mail me to comment on my progress. Using this web journal, I lost 40 pounds.

I kept a web journal on and off for the next couple of years. Gradually, I wrote less and less about diet and exercise, and more and more about my daily life. I found that I enjoyed writing for the web, and other people seemed to like what I wrote.

It was tough going, though. In the olden days, we didn’t have blogging tools like WordPress and Moveable Type. If we wanted to keep a web journal, we had to update it by hand. Today, we just type in our text, press “publish”, and we’re golden. But back then, we had to write the HTML to format every page. We had to build our archives by hand, and update them every day. It was a lot of work, and it was a colossal pain in the butt! How many of you would like to hand-update your blogs every time you upload a post?

Fortunately, some folks in San Francisco saw a business opportunity. A company called Pyra came along and created a tool called Blogger, which people could use to automatically update their weblogs. And what were weblogs? Nothing more than web journals!

Blogger was clunky and prone to crashes, but it sure beat updating a web journal by hand. So, on 16 March 2001, I made my first Blogger account and I used the software to start my first weblog.

Continue reading →

A Blogging Sin

Ugh. I have plenty to say, but I’m just not saying it. The problem is that once I let a few days go by without posting something here, it becomes a Thing. It’s a burden. I feel pressure for my next post to be really stupendous and awesome. But that’s not what my next post is going to be, and I know it.

For example, I happen to know that the two things I want to write about at the moment are:

How many frickin’ calories there are in a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich.
How I’ve begun to use an old-school organization system that gives me the best of both worlds: chore cloud and list of things to do.

But because two weeks have gone by without a single post here, I instead commit a blogging sin: I write about how little I am writing.

Still, now that I’ve got that out of the way, maybe we can move on to more interesting things!

Who Owns the Memories?

This article was originally published at Foldedspace on 11 January 2002.

Recently I’ve given a lot of thought to the responsibilities and obligations of a journalist. When I say journalist, I don’t mean a reporter; I mean a person who keeps a journal, or a weblog, or who writes a personal history.

Through my weblogs, I share many of the important events in my life (and, some would say, many of the unimportant events in my life). To what degree am I obligated to edit what I write in a public forum? To what degree am I obligated not to edit what I write here? To what degree is this obligation to the truth in blogging different than the obligation to the truth when I create a scrapbook/album that contains my personal history?

These are tough questions.

I am generally an open and honest person. I see no sense in hiding the truth. However, I recognize that in some cases the truth:

may not be productive,
may hurt somebody else, and/or
may not be mine to share

(There are other cases, too. Sometimes people are morally or legally bound to avoid the truth. If you cannot imagine such a case, you’re not thinking very hard.)

I have a friend who is undergoing a gender change. While this is not a huge component of my life, it is a huge component of ~~his~~ her life. When we spend time together, it becomes a rather large issue between us, for good or ill. This is something that I’d normally be inclined to share at my personal weblog, and certainly in my scrapbook/personal history. Is it something I’m allowed to share, though? Is it something I should share? Tough questions.

In this case, I’ve opted not to discuss the subject in my weblogs. However, I’ve asked (and been granted) permission from this person to incorporate this particular aspect of our relationship into my personal history. I have a greater degree of control over who accesses my personal history, as it’s a physical object — a scrapbook — that I alone grant permission to view. My weblogs are open for the entire world to see.

But even my personal history raises questions about honesty and truth. Where should the line be drawn regarding what I put in my scrapbook? I have another friend that is gay and semi-out. However, he’s not completely out. How much of this should I put in my personal history? It’s always there when I’m with him — it’s a huge component of who he is. It seems senseless to skirt the issue when I’m documenting my life. Yet, is it really my decision?

Another example: I have strong feelings regarding my parents, both positive and negative. Whether I place my positive feelings in my scrapbook is not an issue. Nobody minds reading positive things about themselves. But what about my negative feelings? My father is dead, so it’s less of an issue. I don’t mind putting down the things that bugged me, the things that made our relationship difficult.

Is it fair for me to write only the positive things about my mother and not mention the less flattering things (which are nevertheless a portion of her character, and a portion of my relationship with her)?

Similarly, I have a letter from a friend in which she confesses things that she might consider secret. The letter is very much meant to be communication between me and this friend. However, it is a huge component of my personal history. How can I edit it from my scrapbook? Yet, how do I handle its presence? Do I black out the most provocative lines, so that when others read the history they are left in the dark? Blacking out these lines makes the letter mundane, unworthy of inclusion in my scrapbook. Allowing the lines to remain raises issues regarding secrecy and trust and friendship.

Who owns the memories? How much honesty is too much?

Taming the Trolls: Dealing with Negative Blog Comments

The key to a great blog is a great community. Readers return to a blog if they believe their comments are valued, and if they receive value from the comments of others. This interactivity is one of the things that sets blogs apart from traditional media, one of the things that makes them more valuable.

But it’s easy to lose control of a blog. One rotten apple can spoil the bunch. One negative commenter, one jerk, one asshole can drag down the level of conversation. When this happens, readers can — and do — leave.

A Taxonomy of Trolls

I’ve been blogging for over eight years now, three of them at Get Rich Slowly. I’ve been on the Internet for 16 years, and in online discussion forums (or BBSes) for almost 25. Dealing with jerks and assholes is just part of online communication.

That said, it can be tough to take when this sort of negative vibe infiltrates a community that you run. When it’s elsewhere on the Internet, it’s fine. But in your own yard? Not so much. I’m fortunate at GRS that I rarely have Negative Nellys squawking and complaining. All the same, they do appear from time-to-time.

There’s a fellow named Dean, for example, who appears every few months to leave a new nasty comment. In March, during a discussion of “traditional skills”, Dean left a particular gem:

This site is retard. Seriously, goats? Other sites are talking about investing and new tax laws and stimulus bill and you’re talking about raising goats and eggs. Jesus fucking Christ this blog is fucking stupid.

To be honest, I usually publish Dean’s comments because I find them entertaining (and don’t feel hurt by them). But that’s not always the case. Sometimes I withhold comments because I feel they’ll cause problems.

I’m holding “tryouts” for a Staff Writer position at Get Rich Slowly right now. When I asked my readers for feedback, Ben thought it was acceptable to write, “Pick April, she’s hot.” This was the third comment I’d fielded — and nuked — about how April was “hot”. What the hell does that have to do with her ability to write about and convey personal-finance information? Why is it acceptable to write this sort of stuff about women writers and not about men? Sexism like this has no place at Get Rich Slowly.

Perhaps the most extreme example, though, came after a guest post from The Motley Fool’s Robert Brokamp. A reader named Kevin left a long rant attacking Brokamp and his advice. Kevin followed up with a rant accusing me of censorship because I refused to publish his first comment. I replied by e-mail:

A blog is not a democracy. It’s a benevolent dictatorship. I am a very benevolent dictator, but I’m still a dictator. There are certain things I don’t allow. You can criticize me and my guest posters all you want, but I’m not going to let you do it in a nasty manner, and I’m not going to let you spread misinformation and hysteria at Get Rich Slowly…Refusing to publish a comment is not censorship. I am not a government. I am not the mass media.

These trolls — and many others — are a blight. There are many earnest, intelligent bloggers contributing quality content to the Internet. It takes time and effort to create useful information. It takes almost no intelligence and no time and no effort to tear down somebody else’s work.

Taming the Trolls

Fortunately, taming the trolls is relatively easy. After years of dealing with problem commenters, I’ve developed the following series of technique for keeping the tone civil and positive on my blogs:

Set an example. If you want the tone to stay positive, keep your posts positive. If you want the discussion to steer clear of politics and religion (as I do at GRS), then don’t bring those subjects up in your posts. Do unto your readers as you would have them do unto you. Lead by example.
Nip problems in the bud. If you have a new reader that is intent on trolling or who always seems to be harping on the same subjects, take care of the problem early. Don’t let it become a site-wide issue.
Let your readers defend you. This one is huge, at least at GRS. I have a tendency to want to justify myself every time somebody complains. It just makes me seem whiney and defensive, though. Instead, Kris has taught me that if the complainer is out of bounds, my readers will defend me. Better to let the community swarm the problem (like white blood cells attacking an invader!) than to try to come off as self-righteous.
Take it to e-mail. There are times to engage commenters head-to-head on the blog, but those are few and far between. If I really want to discuss something with a complainer, I try to reply by e-mail. When I do this, the commenters are sheepish and apologetic nearly every time.
If you want to defeat your enemy, sing his song. Really obscure music reference there (Google is your friend), but this is a mantra of mine. When somebody complains, I try to see things from her point of view before I do anything else. I try to see her side of the argument. Then, when I respond (especially via e-mail), I lead with empathy, trying to discuss their point of view, and then describing how mine is different. This very often defuses the situation.
Edit ruthlessly. Chris Guillebeau taught me something recently that has become a sort of mantra for me: “A blog is not a democracy.” If somebody has infected your site with poison, cut out the wound. You’re under no legal or moral obligation to leave up crap that’s just going to weaken the site and the discussion. Here’s an example: Last week, I posted a short bit about an “accidental slumlord”. A semi-regular GRS reader came in with a snide comment about liberals, which I let stand, and a crack about “Balack Yobama”, which I removed immediately. I also e-mailed him and told him why I was making the edit, but that wasn’t a requirement. Remember: A blog is not a democracy.

One final tactic is to take the complaints and respond to them in a blog post. If you do this, it’s important not to make this a power play. Don’t use your position to denounce your critics and to build up your own position. Instead, try to spur a thoughtful discussion. Present your argument and present the other side and discuss the pros and cons of each. Then open it to the readers for discussion.

The Fruits of My Labor

I’ve received a lot of complimentary e-mail about the way I handle the GRS community, particularly negative commenters. (And The Wall Street Journal praised the level of discussion at the site.) To be honest, though, I don’t get many bad apples, primarily because I’m pro-active in plucking them from the barrel before they can spoil everything.

I like to think that my own blogging style discourages negative responses. (Don’t mean to sound arrogant here; this is just something I really work at, and I think I do a good job.) I’m proud that some of my worst critics have become my most ardent supporters through the use of these methods.

Writing for Different Crowds: Why I Chose to Combine All of My Blogs Into One

Via e-mail, Cory asks:

You consolidated a good number of sites into your personal site, Foldedspace. Why did you choose that route? Was it just easier to maintain one site than many, or did you find a lot of overlap in what you wrote? I’m just starting to blog again, but I have a good four different subjects I’d like to write about, and I’m trying to decide whether to separate them into distinct sites or keep them together, as you have.

This is a great question.

When I originally set up my blog empire, I thought it would be fun to have several niche blogs. In a way, it was. Around various parts of the Internet, I had:

Animal Intelligence, a blog about animal intelligence
Bibliophilic, my blog about books
Comic Strip Library, a comic-strip blog that I never actually started
Four Color Comics, a blog about comics
Get Fit Slowly, the health and fitness blog I co-authored with my friend, Mac
Get Green Slowly, my blog about environmentalism (which never got beyond domain registration)
Get Rich Slowly, my main money blog
Money Hacks, my other money blog
Oak Grove Crossing, the group blog I was going to start with friends to write about our neighborhood.
Spiral Bound, my stillborn blog about paper and notebooks (yes, really)
Success Daily, a stillborn blog about success topics
Tech Lust, a gadget blog that never got going
Vintage Pop, my blog about U.S. popular culture from before 1950.

I’m not the only one who has this blog addiction. My friend Jim Wang (from Bargaineering) is perhaps the worst of the lot. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he has dozens of blogs. I keep finding new ones.

But with every blog, there’s a certain “overhead” of attention required, and I found that as my personal finance blog grew and grew, I had less time to devote to each of my many niche sites. They fell dormant. They stagnated.

Perhaps worse, this site (in its foldedspace.org form), which had once boasted a small but close community, also fell into disuse. At one time, I wrote at Foldedspace nearly every day, and we had many lively conversations here on a variety of topics. As I fragmented my writing into many little niches, that went away.

Eventually I realized that I was doing myself a disservice. I wanted to write about this other stuff, about animal intelligence and comic books and fitness, but having separate blogs for each topic was just too much of a barrier, both for me and for potential readers. A couple of months ago, I came to the conclusion that it was time to reclaim the diaspora, to bring the children back to their ancestral homeland. I wanted to resurrect Foldedspace and to use it to feature all of my non-financial writing.

My big worry about re-merging everything was: Would anyone read this Frankenstein monster of a site? It occurred to me that it didn’t matter. I don’t write these other blogs for an audience, really. I write them for me. If there is no audience for a Foldedspace that explores a hodge-podge of subjects, that’s fine. I’m at least writing for myself and for a few close friends.

So I made the move. I cut back to two blogs: Get Rich Slowly and Foldedspace.

From the standpoint of maximizing audience and maximizing revenue, this probably makes little sense. But Foldedspace doesn’t need to yield either of these things for me to be happy. (In fact, I’ve removed all ads from the jdroth.com version of Foldedspace.) It just needs to be a spot where I can write about cats and comic books, and about blogs and bicycles.

This is a very long answer, and I don’t think it really addresses Cory’s question. For me, it made sense to combine everything into one blog. For Cory, it may not. All I know is that since I made this move a few weeks ago, I feel invigorated. I’m excited about writing again. It feels great to have Foldedspace operational once more.

The Sausage Factory: Thoughts on the New Media and the Old

I’ve been working a little with a PR rep lately, and it’s given me a glimpse into a new world — a world I don’t particularly like.

From my experience, sound personal finance tips are timeless. We may get tired of hearing them, but that doesn’t change the fact that they work. The reason they’re repeated so often is because they’re effective.

As a result, when I write about various aspects of personal finance at Get Rich Slowly, I tend to cover the same themes repeatedly. That’s just the nature of the beast. I try to explore topics from new angles or give added color, but there are only so many ways you can write about “buy low, sell high” or “spend less than you earn”.

In Search of the New…

The PR rep I’m working with feeds me potential interviews with reporters for major media outlets. I’m happy to provide help when I can. But some of the requests from the reporters drive me nuts. There’s a certain group that is after new! tips. I get that they want to have original content and share new ideas. That’s great. But a lot of this seems forced.

Here’s an example of one request I saw recently:

I am writing an article about money-saving travel trends for the Los Angeles Times.

These must be new, very different, a little over-the-top/fun, perhaps (not necessarily) green must haves an in this down economy angle travel-related ideas/services/products of interest to readers who may no longer have as much (or any) disposable income.

They can be related to hotels/restaurants/transportation, you name it, I’ll look at it if it fits my protocol above.

Please note: a little over-the-top, new, different are key requirements. For example, I dont want to hear about hotels that are offering a third night free type thing. Ideas that are creative, that might wow readers, are what I’m looking for.

I don’t mean to pick on this writer — which is why I’m not naming names — because this is indicative of the way many reporters approach stories.

The Forest for the Trees

I think this approach misses the point, and in a big way. When you emphasize novel saving ideas, when you go for over-the-top, you’re ignoring the methods that have been proven to work. Again, just because we’ve heard the same tips 20 times before doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hear them for a 21st.

I’m also bothered by how the financial media manufacturers its stories. (It’s not just the financial media — I’m just using that as an example because I’ve seen it first-hand.) Some outlets — especially television — go into a story with the end in mind: “Let’s write about somebody who bought a house and was duped into a subprime mortgage and now is facing bankruptcy!”

Again, maybe that makes for a compelling story, but it’s also sensationalistic. And it’s not telling the truth — not in the larger sense. That is, the media is telling the truth about that individual, but by focusing on him, they’re ignoring the 98% of the population who are in different circumstances. They highlight the extreme in an effort to shock us.

On the Money

I saw this first-hand a couple of months ago when I made a short appearance on a major business television network. They asked me to write my story for them. It had to be something I could read aloud in under sixty seconds.

After I submitted my copy, one of the show’s editors worked with me for a couple of hours to refine the script. “Can we say this?” she’d ask, as she altered sentences. What she wanted me to say was true, but it was emphasizing all the wrong things.

When we were finished with the revisions, there was nothing in the piece about Get Rich Slowly, which is the single most important factor in my financial turnaround. It was like telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood without mentioning the wolf while emphasizing the fabric of the hood.

The Sausage Factory

Earlier this year at the old Foldedspace, I wrote about this experience:

These stories are manufactured, just like a cardboard box. They’re not reported. The “journalists” create the story they think their audience wants, and when they contact me, I’m just an ingredient

Bill, one of the fellows working with me, listened to my complaints, and then he said, “J.D., you can’t look at it like that. You can’t expect it to be straight reporting because it’s not. You have to think of it like sausage. What they’re producing is sausage. The media is a giant sausage factory. You don’t want to know what goes into the sausage or how it’s made. You just have to trust that what comes out at the other end tastes good.”

The more time I spend interacting with the traditional news media, the less I trust it. I don’t trust the liberal media, I don’t trust the conservative media — I don’t trust any of it. I don’t believe I’m being told the Truth.

Turning to Blogs

If I want the Truth, I turn to blogs. I know that I may not be getting truth from them (meaning they may be disguising bits of info, like names and dates, in order to protect friends and family), but I’m getting the Truth (meaning they’re not lying to me about the Big Picture). To me, this is more important.

Traditional media often gets on its high-horse when talking about blogs because “bloggers don’t have to meet rigorous fact-checking standards”. I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. What does it matter if you get the facts straight, but you’re totally distorting what they mean? Plus, I’ve had enough reporters screw up the facts I give them to know that they’re no more reliable than bloggers.

Old media is dying. I, for one, will not mourn its passing.

Update: Via Nicole: The corporations that own our largest media outlets are controlling and censoring the content of their news organizations based on the unrelated interests of the parent corporation. It’s not exactly what I wrote about above, but it’s pretty damn close. It’s another type of processed meat.