Blog-versary I: Lessons Learned

Light the candle. "For What It's Worth" is a year old. Make a wish. Let's see now...

This entire blog started out as an experiment to teach myself some higher level technical/computer skills, but it also evolved into a new form of writing. As a screenwriter, you have many freedoms, but you also are responsible for juggling many other considerations from production and casting issues to notes from the producer's girlfriend, etc. A blog allows you to write pretty much what you want. You still get notes, of course, but they come from your readers who post comments.

"For What It's Worth" touches on a lot of issues: entertainment, politics, culture, life -- and, whenever possible, I try to talk about these subjects while including personal references that will, hopefully, make them unique. I also violate standard blogging by going for the "essay" feel most often, rather than the tossed-off blurb of the moment. Something else I like to do is to get a lot of visual content into each post to make them "pop" off the screen more and to give them a greater sense of fun.

At the beginning, I had no clue whatsoever how to get an honest-to-God banner up top and the standard issue one looked so tacky, I could barely stand to post. Later this year, my design whiz friend Nancy Tokos (if you need something like this, write her) designed a series of banners for me which I rotate. In fact, tell me which one you like the best:

#1 Earth Tones

#2 Blue Distress

#3 Fire and Glass

#4 Speed of Life

That photo, BTW, is from an important day in my life. Back when I was chairman of the TV Academy, in the days after 9/11, we were forced to postpone the Emmy Awards twice. This picture was taken on October 7, the day we were supposed to be doing the originally postponed Emmys but were instead cancelling them again because of the Afghanistan bombing campaign which was beginning. CBS President Les Moonves, producer Don Mischer and myself all had to face about 250 reporters and dozens of video cameras that day and explain what our plans were.

Anyway, the whole thing started out on Blogger (because it was free) but, as I say, it never looked right, and I switched to TypePad about four months into the experiment. It never looked right on TypePad either, but it's less wrong. I'm not an HTML wizard so I have to live with the limitations of what's being offered rather than what I see happening in my mind. Still, good enough...

I always loved the Buffalo Springfield song, "For What It's Worth," and it seemed to work nicely when paired with the extra line, "Dispatches from the Culture War." I'd used the song before on the NBC series "Dark Skies" to great effect, and it had a lot of personal meaning for me. Plus, it's so wonderfully paranoid ("There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear, there's a man with a gun over there, telling me I got to beware...").

I maintain two other blogs on my TypePad account besides "For What It's Worth" and I encourage you to visit them when you have a chance:

Movie Smackdown! is a film review concept with a twist. We review one film that is out in the theaters against a related film (by content, star, etc.) which is available on DVD or TV.

Instant History is all about reaching back into the back-stacks of Newsweek and Time for dramatic covers and then looking at their coverage of issues and events from the perspective of immediate journalism which must be written without the advantage of historical perspective. History as first draft.

Over the year, "For What It's Worth" has evolved into the flagship blog, however, and both of the others into specialty acts whose content feeds onto FWIW.

At the beginning, the blog was called "News! Views! Schmooze!" for nearly eight months. I never loved that either because it seemed completely frivolous and I wanted to aspire to something more like what you'd see as a column in Daily Variety or USA Today. Plus, there was another blog out there called "News, Views and Shmooze" (without the "c" in Schmooze) run by a novelist with the more than occasional spin into Judaism (which is fine by me, but probably confusing if anybody looking for one blog found the other).

As for hits... well, that's been an education, too. I remember when it first went up getting a dozen hits in a day. I learned how to "ping" every post, and the hits had reached a pretty steady 100 a day most recently. Then I published a single post about a proposal that J. Michael Straczynski and I had made a few years ago to "re-boot" the "Star Trek" series with Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and the number of hits on that single day went to nearly 9,000!

Trekstorm '06: The Power of Kirk!

As you can see from the Sitemeter grab above, the hits have come back to Earth, but they seem to have stabilized much higher than before. A lot of new visitors from all over the world seem to be dropping by. I guess this post is for them.

Also, for this first anniversary, we've added a page that lets you sort through the previous posts and you can access it by CLICKING HERE. It was built with iWeb but seems to be a lot more helpful than the way old posts are grouped by TypePad. At least here you can see for yourself, at a glance, what might interest you.

In any case, as we begin Year II of "For What It's Worth", I'm sure there will be new changes to be made. Still, I want to thank all of you who have come by for spending the time, and making the comments, and being a part of this experience. Your opinions are always welcome and, as people used to say even before the Age of Blogs...

I'll keep you posted.

Comments

[AlRo]

btw .. ditto on the Fire and Glass one... Red sells afterall ;)

Cheers.

[AlRo]

Happy Birth/BlogDay

[Devi]

As far as the banners? I actually like "Fire and Glass" the best. It has what I consider both the intensity and fluidity(sp) I find interesting in your entries.

Face it, one minute I'm lauging at an entry, the next entry might make me extremely mad or sad. It's like a rollercoaster ride when I come here and I'm still going back and trying to read all your past posts.

I love the new layout, and think the way you have subjects set up make looking around more interesting and easy.

dev

[Jeff]

Oh... and FWIW, I like the "earth tones" header best. "Speed of life" is also cool looking, but feels too much like corporate/network news for my tastes.

[Jeff]

Hi Bryce,

I was one of the ones that landed here in the wake of the Star Trek post and stuck around. In fact, you're on a short list of sites feeding my aggregator now. Your posts are always (okay, usually) intriguing and I appreciate your insight on various topics. The blog that's got me as a card-carrying supporter of this site, though, is Movie Smackdown. I absolutely love that idea, and thank you for writing it. Who'da thunk there could be suspense in a movie review?!

I also like your writing style. It's very easy to relate to. I really feel like you're sitting and letting me in on your opinion, rather than trying to shove it down my throat, as many blogs seem to do.

Keep up the good work!

[Brent]

Congratulations on the Blogiversary Bryce! For the record I like the banner you call Earth Tones. I swear that #4 looks like the opener for some Local station's Eyewitness (or all to frequently Eyewitless) News, while #3 looks like helicpopter footage of a California wildfire.

Anyway, I've always found the content on your blog interesting, and if I could ever get mine looking and reading half as good as your's I'd be happy.