Prior to Web 2.0 and the rapid proliferation of things like blogs, social media and social networks the most common way to communicate with people was by using newsletters. While one could manually update static web pages things like newsletters were easily created and could be sent en mass to the people who had signed up to receive them. One of the best known cases of people who used this medium for me had to be Chris Pirillo who even wrote a book about it at one time as being the most powerful medium of communication.

With the advent of Web 2.0 and all the easy to publish methods that allowed for mass communication newsletters from the movers and shakers of the Internet began a slow decline in popularity. One of the early adopters of blogging of course was Jason Calacanis who says that blogging is dead and has returned to the email newsletter format for his more intimate conversation that he feels has gone MIA in our Web 2.0 world.

Now many of us on the [nw] web have [nw] called bullshit [nw] on this announcement that Calacanis has retired from blogging [nw] and plans on limiting his conversation to a selective list of 500 750 1,000 1,100 newsletter subscribers. However as we were informed by Robert Scoble on FriendFeed he has received the first of Jason’s newsletters which he then posted on his posterous blog [nw] and I am sure it is getting a lot of traffic at this point.

Personally I think Jason is full of shit on this retirement thing but I thought I would take a look at this new and intimate newsletter and see what it had to say and guess what – it’s just a continuation of his last blog post along with some back patting on how a head of the curve he is by doing this. I also thought it would be interesting to take some of the things he said in this news letter and see how high the bullshit meter goes.

He starts out the newsletter with a couple of paragraphs of discounting the idea that this was all a joke and then gets to the gist of the inaugural newsletter with this

Is blogging dead?
————————-
Yes, it is. Officially.

Okay folks it’s official we can all hang up out blogs as a waste of time and go onto other things because Jason says so. Wow that’s a hellva responsibility to take on there Jason – being the arbiter of a whole medium’s validity.

He then follows that up with

Bloggers spend more time digging, tweeting, and SEOing their posts
than they do on the posts themselves. In the early days of blogging
Peter Rojas, who was my blog professor, told me what was required to
win at blogging: “show up every day.” In 2003 and 2004 that was the
case. Today? What’s required is a team of social marketers to get your
message out there, and a second one to manage the fall-out from
whatever you’ve said.

Well Jason you may have been concerned with SEO and digg points or felt you needed to hire a bunch of experts in the social media field (the field you yourself felt you were knowledgeable so many times) but to suggest that this is something that all bloggers concern themselves with is just assuming too damn much. I have been doing this for some time and I couldn’t give a damn about SEO or whether I’ve been on digg or whether I have the most followers on Twitter. There are a lot of bloggers out there who I am sure feel exactly the same way and for you to paint all bloggers with this paintbrush is in a way rather insulting.

Of course there is the obligatory swipe at Nick Denton and his Enquirer style of blogging across all his properties. Here’s a hint Jason – not all bloggers are cut from the same cloth. Nor do we all hop on the link bait train as he likes to suggest we do

Excelling in blogging today is about link-baiting, the act of writing
something inflammatory in order to get a link. Many folks say I’m
responsible for link-baiting–these people are absolute idiots. I’ve
never tried to get any of these insecure, lonely freaks to link to
something I’ve said.

Just look at any of the really excellent bloggers out there like Alexander van Elsas, Sprague D and right through to the old timers like Mathew Ingram shows just how wrong Jason is and the fact is the accusations of him link baiting have a lot more validity than him accusing other bloggers doing it.

He then raises the specter of how mean the blogosphere has become by trotting out the whole Xeni and Boing Boing episode which I note like most of the newsletter he does very linking to prove his point(s). Get a grip Jason – nastiness isn’t something that is specific to the blogosphere. People can and very often are very nasty – it doesn’t matter if they are being such on the Internet or even in real life – we will always have nasty people who like nothing better than to belittle and berate those who they don’t like.

In the section where he tries to explain why the switch to email and his rebuttal against the meanness of the blogosphere Jason writes

Why should we all build our homes and give residence to the trolls
under them? Comments on blogs inevitably implode, and we all accept it
under the belief that “open is better!” Open is not better. Running a
blog is like letting a virtuoso play for 90 minutes are Carnegie Hall,
and then seconds after their performance you run to the back Alley and
grab the most inebriated homeless person drag them on stage and ask
them what they think of the performance they overheard in the Alley.
They then take a piss on the stage and say “F-you” to the people who
just had a wonderful experience for 90 or 92 minutes. That’s openness
for you… my how far we’ve come! We’ve put the wisdom of the deranged
on the same level as the wisdom of the wise.

Sorry Jason just like in my home I will not allow bad behavior the same applies to my blog and that is where being an administrator or caretaker of your home of thoughts comes in. It is our responsibility to stand up and eject those who would come on our blogs and spread hateful things. If you feel that someone has written something mean and nasty then fucking well delete it - don’t go whining about how nasty people are. Just because a person can’t be bothered to become involved in their blog beyond firing off a post then it is their own faults for this type of thing to happen and continue. If I was the stage manager in your example I would have booted the drunk off and seriously consider doing the same to the person who brought the drunk in. Don’t pass the blame for your own inability to manage your blog on others.

The fact is that in my opinion Jason really found himself not the center of attention that he once might have been when there weren’t so many really good and intelligent bloggers out there. That is of course the advantage of being an early adopter – the level of competition – getting those eyeballs – is a lot less but there are better alternatives out there now compared to the nonsense that could be found on Jason’s blog lately. Now though the quality level of the blogosphere is rising regardless of things like Valleywag or blogs like it and Jason was finding himself being sidelined which wouldn’t sit well for a man with the ego of Jason Calacanis.

So he decides to paint everyone in the blogosphere with the same paintbrush and calling us all losers and useless in the process. Well all I can say is that no newsletter is going to make him anymore relevant. The fact is that in the end he will end up losing real feedback because he has decided to shut out any and all dissenting voices. In exchange he is filling his world with nothing less than a bunch of people who agree with him and nobody learns anything of value when they do this.

Instead of trying to work towards making something better Jason retreated to a world where he is once again the king.

Enjoy your personal echo chamber Jason because the rest of us have moved on.