» About Ten Second News (Kevin Whited & Alex Whitlock, TSN)
Ten Second News is a collaborative linkblog about politics, books, and culture.
By "linkblog," we mean that our emphasis is on links to interesting writing about politics, books, and culture across the internet. While we will sometimes offer short, pithy commentary on the items we link, our emphasis is less on our commentary and more on the articles we are linking. We are posting articles we want you to click over and read (sometimes, we'll give you a hint why in our comments -- sometimes we'll just link). In fact, we even have a headlines-only page if you prefer to sample our links without our commentary.
The blog emerged from discussions between Alex Whitlock and Kevin Whited, who were both lamenting the decline of blogs by "linkers" at the expense of the proliferation of blogs by "thinkers" (many offering highly partisan, rancorous, lengthy opinions on mostly the same news items of the day). Somewhere along the way, we both concluded, blogs that specialized in linking interesting material on the web have become much less prevalent (including the death of our old linkblog, Reductio Ad Absurdum).
Ten Second News is, to some extent, the resurrection of Reductio Ad Absurdum, fused with the approach of Furl.net (where we have, surprisingly, both built small readerships with our linking) and a healthy dose of Brothers Judd-style pithy commentary. We think some of the social features we've added make it more interesting than a strict linkblog or Furl, though. It's much more interactive.
We do require that our guests register to comment, and we do enforce a variant of Robert Scoble's "family room" comments policy. Disagreement is welcome and encouraged, but we hope to host an intelligent, civil conversation about the items we link. If you are not capable of politely discussing such matters (even if you happen to disagree strongly with the posters or other commenters), this is not the place for you. If you're looking for flame or highly partisan web wars, this is not the place for you. We wish that adopting this policy was unnecessary, but our experiences on the internet confirm that some trolls simply cannot abide by these rules. They will not be allowed to hijack our discussions here.
Finally, we'd like to note that our linking of articles does not necessarily imply agreement with the article and/or author. Rather, our selection of articles only suggests that we find the article worth reading and considering for some reason. One would think this disclaimer unneccesary as well, but experience confirms that we should spell it out. We should also note that the opinions expressed on the blog are solely those of the individual authors, and in no way represent the views of our employers, significant others, families, pets, or any other parties!
Posted by Kevin Whited on 18 August 2007, 08:55 PM
Filed under: Administrativia
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Citation: Sphere: Related Content | Technorati | Bloglines | Add This
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All content © 2007, Ten Second News and the respective authors.
Opinions expressed on this site are offered by the individual authors, and do not represent the views of their employers or any other parties.
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