And they hope, in the end, that being read they might quit their day jobs and write full time. Writing full time is not an easy row to hoe. It’s  bloody hard work if you’re trying to do it clearly and well and  day after day.

Here at the TucsonCitizen the majority of the content providers are unpaid bloggers. (Columnists, Reporters, Citizen Journalists.) It’s always been “no pay” in the blogosphere. Bloggers have something to say that they want other people to read and for the most part have been grateful for a platform that allows them to grind their own axes without the benefit of editorial supervision. Being paid was not a primary requirement.

But…and there’s always a but…being paid is no bad thing, and not for the reason you may suspect. Being paid, even at pitiful freelance rates, keeps you working at the craft.

MS DataPort and I have been writing for pay for the best part of 35 years. Not enough to leave our day jobs, and not always the grandest material, but certainly enough to allow us to call ourselves professional writers. Here’s what we’ve found.

When an editor says, yes she’d like a piece on the latest trends, and she’d like it in two weeks, you deliver in two weeks and cheerfully do the rewriting she requires. Why? Because, even though you’re getting paid in pauper’s pence, that’s what professionals do. The promise of a buck or two keeps you writing despite the demands of your day job.

If you are only a volunteer it is too easy to put off until tomorrow what you put off again until the day after that.

Regular visitors to the Tucson Citizen may remember more than one blogger who joined us all excited  and enthusiastic only to fade from view when it turned out that blogging was harder and took more time than expected.

Two of my favorite blogs, gone but not forgotten, were  “God Blogging” and the ever conservative “Fort Buckley.” These were wonderfully written blogs…but I imagine the demands of day jobs put paid to their appearance here. I don’t know if being offered a buck or two would lure them back…but it would be worth a try.

Next: Bulletin Board or Newspaper?

The first was the Salon Blogs group, which is where I did my first blogging. The writers were pretty much what you might expect from a group of Salon readers. Softly leftish, literary, and as likely to post about poetry and music as about politics. For the most part the individual  blogs were pretty to look at.

Looking back I don’t remember that the web was characterized by what we know today as “social media.” I suppose the the first blogs were the social media. You advertised and promoted your own blog by reading other blogs and writing the authors to tell them that you were adding them to your  blogroll. The hope, of course, was that they would respond in kind.

Salon wound down its support for the blogging community and many drifted off to Blogspot, but the sense of community was lost in the sheer size of the Blogspot universe.

The Data Port was happy with Blogger, which was easy to use, and it became active in the blogosphere that grew up around Gabrielle Giffords’ first run for Congress. The blog became much less general and more political.

Eventually, after the emotional Sturm und Drang of that first campaign subsided, The Data Port was picked up by Lefty Blogs and anything of a strictly left wing political nature appeared there. If I blogged about motorcycles, poetry, or the little disturbances of man I wouldn’t make the cut. (Lefty Blogs seems to be dead, by the way. If not, I’d be glad to hear from readers where it’s gone or what has taken its place.)

Being part of a blogging community has advantages and disadvantages that vary according to the nature of the community. One advantage trumps everything else: If you want your blog to be read you’re better off writing cheek by jowl with others in a community of writers. If your blog is posted on a site that regularly attracts readers, your own blog is more likely to be read…or at least looked for. The Data Port has had more readers since joining The Citizen than it had in its other communities.

There are disadvantages, however. Your blog’s appearance is largely out of your hands, constrained as it is by something that roughly resembles a newspaper column or news story.

There is another constraint that’s largely psychological but fairly strong: Once you establish your blog as about some particular topic…politics, dogs, religion, the environment, Hispanic affairs or auto racing…you’ll find it hard to shift gears to something entirely different. You feel that this “something different” is not what your readers want from you.

Two examples: This series, probably; and and an attempt to write a short story in continuing installments. This last seemed so uncomfortable that after a couple of sections I moved it to an alternate Data Port location. No one read it there, either. So, no more short stories.However, you’re stuck with these retrospectives for a while longer.

The one constraint that is significantly lacking is editorial control by Gannett or our editor Mark Evans. So long as you do not utter palpable falsehoods, commit libel or violate copyright you’re good to go. Simple bone-headed errors are cheerfully corrected by our readers.

Next: Writing for Fame and Writing For Money

It has not been uncommon for powerful men in the military and in politics to have a secret love tucked into a corner of their lives. Details of correspondence between FDR and  Lucy Mercer Rutherford have only recently been made public. General Dwight Eisenhower’s attachment to Kay Summersby might have been widely suspected, but was hardly the subject of puerile newspaper coverage while he was running the war. During WWI General Black Jack Pershing had an affair with Louise Cromwell Brooks. (Brooks wanted to divorce her husband and marry Pershing, but he refused. She subsequently married Douglas MacArthur.)

Petraeus has said that he did not discuss material that was security sensitive with the lady in question, his biographer. I am prepared to believe him. Enough already.

One thing that does amaze me is that General Petraeus had so little understanding or awareness of the insecure nature of e-mail. Ah, well, the cat is out of the bag and a career is ruined.

Stephen Colbert nails it:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/421326/november-15-2012/general-s-hospital

Our journalist takes no side and achieves “balance and impartiality” by carefully reporting each position and ….leaves us there. Thanks a bunch! Is that all? Which of these two rascals is right, and doesn’t journalistic good practice deserve at least some attempt to clarify the dispute? Who’s right?

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard takes on this and related issues of truth in journalism in its Summer 2012 issue.A long article by Pulitzer Prize winner Linda Greenhouse asks, “Instead of striving for balance, how about truth for a goal?” Read it here.

Even the most responsible members of the mainstream press have been shy about calling a spade a spade, or in this case calling a lie a lie, but things may be changing Consider this, from the Washington Post’s coverage of Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech by Rosalind Helderman:

Did Paul Ryan bend the truth?

The verdict, rendered by a slew of media fact checkers, was immediate and unequivocal: In his first major speech before the American people, the Republican vice presidential nominee repeatedly left out key facts, ignored context and was blind to his own hypocrisy.

Michael Cooper, writing in the NY Times headlines, Facts Take a Beating in Acceptance Speeches.

Representative Paul D. Ryan used his convention speech on Wednesday to fault President Obama for failing to act on a deficit-reduction plan that he himself had helped kill. He chided Democrats for seeking $716 billion in Medicare cuts that he too had sought. And he lamented the nation’s credit rating — which was downgraded after a debt-ceiling standoff that he and other House Republicans helped instigate.

Maybe the tide is turning.