BLOGGING NOTES, HOUSEKEEPING AND POLICY CHANGES
Ahem. A rare address on the state of Zenpundit. First, the blogroll.
I have added some newcomers to the blogroll – many thanks to Dave Schuler of the Glittering Eye and Tom Scudder of ‘Aqoul for their suggestions – more changes will soon be forthcoming but for now you can welcome:
Ann Althouse
Bliss Street Journal
Chicago Boyz
History Unfolding
SyriaComment
Window on the Arab World, and More !
A fine group of blogs worth your online time to peruse. The next batch of additions will remediate some topical or domain gaps on my blogroll that I believe need plugging. There will be a few deletions of dead or dying blogs or people whom I do not read that often and who, in the interim, appear to have gone insane or joined a sect of unreconstructed wingnuts.
Secondly, after some reflection, I have decided to accept some degree of paid advertising from a reputable company which can be seen in the form of unobtrusive text ads in the margin. I have had inquiries in this regard in the past but have never accepted until now. Why alter my policy ?
While I do not need the money per se I do incur some costs from subscriptions to periodicals, online data bases and ( an exceedingly large number of) books that support my blogging that I might not otherwise have purchased. Moreover, I have plans for upgrading Zenpundit in the near term that involve additional expenditures and it would be nice if the blog can self-finance at least some of these things.
Therefore, I will accept some sponsors who offer products or services that have nothing to do with the topics on which I usually write. If it could be reasonably construed as a conflict of interest I simply won’t take the ad. Completely off-limits would be ads from partisan political campaigns or websites of an adult nature ( call it the “no politicians or whores” rule). Also rejected a priori are gaudy, bandwith sucking, banner ads or pop-ups because I find such things very annoying myself and do not wish to inconvenience my readers.
Other than that, let capitalism reign.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
Thanks very much for the link.
Zenpundit is going on the Boyz when we do our next update.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:18 pm
Hi Lex
Wonderful ! Glad to hear it and welcome aboard !
March 29th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Sounds good to me…always enjoy reading your blog. Thanks for your efforts.
Barnabus
March 30th, 2006 at 2:13 am
I’d like to thank you, Mark, for linking to my blog “alphabet city,” and hope you will keep it in your blogroll despite the hiatus.
Ten hours of work a day in addition to learning 50 pages of dialogue in a week and three hour rehearsals daily are not conducive to blogging.
Keep up the great work at “Zen Pundit.”
March 30th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Not to worry, Robert, we all have professional responsibilities that intrude on blogging from time to time. I understand.
Thank you Barnabus, much appreciated !