Scroll all the way to the end of the article and you'll see Beth's gardening site quoted (she's called the "nameless" Garden Geek Girl).

For those of you who keep online journals, does it tickle you pink to be quoted? Weird you out? Don't really care? Do you get contacted about it (if there is a way to contact you)?

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010721/5033653.html

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2001

Answers

That article made my weekend, because I really do the garden site mostly for myself, it's a lot more fun that Bad Hair Days, and it makes me enormously happy whenever someone else likes it, too. But it was very weird for it to be listed with Justin Hall and John Halcyon Styn et al. Very weird, indeed.

I get contacted by various media people now and then, and I usually decline to be interviewed. I don't know why. I don't hate being mentioned, but I always squirm a little when I see my words in someone else's article. It never feels like it's me.

The local NPR station wanted to interview me back when I was still Lizzie, and I freaked out and didn't even return their e-mail. I still feel kind of bad about that, but only because I was rude, not because I would ever in a million years have gone on the radio at that point. I mean, I was still trying to be anonymous. That would have been awful.

The one thing that really bugs me with reporters or researchers (there are lots of grad students researching online journals these days, and they contact me a lot): do not send me a prepared list of questions that all could have been answered if you'd read my "about me" page or spent five minutes in the archives. I realize you're interviewing lots of people, but it's called research. I never, ever respond to that kind of interview request, because it annoys me. Do your homework, and THEN ask me a sensible question that does not start with "have you been journaling for more than six months?" Look it up, damn it.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2001

Yay Beth!

I found it wierd when my old zine, Retrogression, was being used in some high school class in the DC area. Very wierd. Kinda scary wierd, but cool.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2001

I got a mention in the Sunday Times (of London); it was for my Boring Postcards site (http://www.newbrunette.com/postcards/) but they got the link wrong.

Any publicity is good publicity as long as they get your link right, I would have thought.

It was a little strange to have my postcards of Godalming Town Hall and uranium mines being serenaded in the Sunday Times, all the way across the world.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2001

I was mentioned in the Washington Post (woo-hoo), but not interviewed or anything. Kymm sent me the link. Unfortunately (I think), the reference was to my weblog, but they gave the address for the journal index page. Whatever. Of course, I had been on hiatus for about a month at that point, so I guess I lost an opportunity to gain new readers.

One thing that irks the hell out of me, and I noticed it in the Montreal article as well, is when journalists refer to blogs and journals as though they were interchangeable. Sometimes they are, but they can also be two completely different animals. If you're going to write an article on the subject, at least do a little homework first, no?

I am way too anal about this for my own good, I think. [Takes deep breath.] Okay, I feel better now.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001

Dawn ... interestingly enough, I have a letter-to-the-editor about to be published in the Montreal Gazette on that very subject.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001

Dawn - it pisses me off when people refer to my site as a weblog instead of a journal - which I think they mostly do because I use weblogger as my host.

Actually, the entire "weblog" phenomenon that happened a few years ago I think is silly. A weblog is an anotated list of links updated periodically. They aren't the second coming of Christ. Someone just came up with a cool name.

But then I remember there's real things to worry about in the world.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001

I got the new Entertainment Weekly today and they have an article about weblogs and they too say they are journals. In fact, they are dismissive of Memepool as merely a bunch of links. Lord, you'd figure a place like EW would at least have a hip intern to set them straight.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001