When our “friends” over at the Liberal OC blog recently asked their readers if they should keep our blog feed on their RSS Launching Pad, an overwhelming majority said yes. In the wake of the brouhaha that broke out thereafter, which some referred to as a “blog war,” I crafted a truce with the editors at the Liberal OC. I asked my bloggers to no longer make reference to any of the bloggers at the Liberal OC, in a negative way. The bloggers at the Liberal OC agreed to do the same.
But the truce did not hold long. They put up a spoof post on April 18, complete with our logo. I disregarded it as it was satire. But then today our RSS feed was gone from the Liberal OC Launching Pad, and in its place was a link to a citrus grower’s site. I guess that’s that.
Obviously the folks at the Liberal OC have a right to run their blog as it pleases them. We will continue to offer a link to their blog on our blog links. We don’t have RSS feeds, but we plan to add them in the future when we redo our site, which is coming soon, hopefully.
Why is Liberal OC having such issues with us? Beats me. Thin skin? Maybe. Most likely they are just upset because we don’t hold back on reporting what the area Democrats are up to. To be fair, we do the same to area Republicans. And my blog team includes a fairly even split of Republicans and Democrats.
If you are looking for a website that chronicles all of the local blogs feeds, look no further than Blognetnews. They provide a great service in that they automatically list all the stories being put up by all the top blogs in California. And you can filter the output to display only the blogs you like to read. And they have a lot of fun features, such as blog rankings, hot comments, most clicked, most active, etc. I start my day with them and check their site out throughout the day. The best part is that Blognetnews does not play games as to whom they decide to list.
The irony of all this is that we had this happen to us once before when Matt/Jubal Cunningham got mad and took our link off the links at the OC Blog, before it morphed into Red County, which no longer refers readers to any other blogs. And after he dumped us, guess what? It did not hurt our numbers one bit.
Currently, according to our Sitemeter program, the Liberal OC contributes 6.5% of our referrals. Google’s Analytics program tells me that they contribute 6.9% of our new readers. So we will survive being de-listed by the Liberal OC. And no, I am not upset about this. Somewhat surprised but not upset. We have plenty of other referral sources and good relationships with all of the local media. And we hit the AP wire more than once in the last year.
As always, we appreciate all of our readers and thank you for visiting the Orange Juice blog.
hmm… they still got links to our top stories including this one, but the main link to Orange Juice has become a citrus site like you say. And underneath they’ve got an Edtior’s Note: The RSS Feed for The Orange Juice has been intermittent in it’s [btw that’s “its” boys] functioning. If it is missing from here, it is not our doing.
Dunno how they would explain the citrus site though. Some prankster’s doing? Does the right hand know what the left is doing over there? Could Dan or Andrew be pulling little pranks while Chris or Gila aren’t looking? Inquiring minds want to know… well, other things actually.
We’re still 15% yes above no on the poll anyway…
Art/Vern,
Clearly the top post is a joke, hey at least they didn’t send it to Janets website.
As for the rest of your site, you must be aware of some of your performance problems. During our discussions after OCBlog wanted to dump the link, several commented on performance problems that locked up computers.
When I try to navigate to your posts via LibOC but about 50% of the time your link gets a “file not found error”. So the technical issues are real, the other content issues are debatable.
One thing thats not debatable is SMS posts are a waste of time. Sorry she might be a real nice person and there might be a perfect place for her rants, I just can’t imagine where that might be. Not sure that place exists in the OC.
I’ll continue to view posts that look like interesting Santa Ana issues via LibOC’s links because they weed out the other stuff for me.
So much drama. I hate this.
The feed is working again Art. Vern, I have no idea how to disable your feed nor do I have inclination to. The problem is a technical one, on your end.
Art – the cease fire still holds and its unfair of you to say breaches have only occured from our side and you know that.
Mike,
Me too. Ergo this post, where I wrote “Obviously the folks at the Liberal OC have a right to run their blog as it pleases them.”
I have asked my bloggers to continue the cease fire. We have plenty of things to write about and quite frankly I think we have established that we can do just fine on our own. Our numbers today are at 632 hits and over 1,800 page views. Good enough for me.
Well, the thing is, The Liberal OC has a bunch of different people posting there and it’s unfortunate that you seem fine to lump us all together.
I’m aware of their issues between the sites and they seem to be more complicated than at first blush, but posts like this don’t help. Did you ever think to email Chris and ask what the link was about rather than writing an entire post about it and assuming the worst?
I try not to lump everyone here at the OJ into one entity, you are all individuals who post your own thoughts and do as you please, I think the bloggers at the Liberal OC deserve the same benefit of the doubt.
Sorry Heather, but your site is not as independent as you think it is. If Art lumps you all together in his own mind, as I do, then maybe you guys should take a look at that?
SMS
SMS – Seeing as though you don’t blog at the Liberal OC, I’m not quite sure how you can talk about it in such a way. You don’t know enough to judge.
And I have this little saying that maybe will help, “Just because you have a problem with me, doesn’t make it my problem”.
Fine, go ahead and lump us all together, it will make it easier for me to stop reading the OJ and commenting here because obviously I’m just one of those Liberal OC bloggers. Nice.
No, Heather, come back! The rest of us love you!
Did you all know Heather’s way-cool hubby Gary is running for State Senate against either Mimi Walters or that Siddhu guy – both whistling weenies?
Me and Obama Girl Heather are going to single-handedly end this stoopid Montague-Capulet feud of the blogs. (Platonically, Gary! Platonically!)
Heather-
I’ve told you many times that I see you as a voice of reason over there and harbor no personal animosity towards you, but I know your cohorts over there and I bet sometimes the peer pressure must get to you too.
And just because I don’t blog at ‘The LBC’ is no excuse to accuse me of not knowing what I’m talking about. You and I both know full well that I do or I wouldn’t be here.
SMS
I blog for fun, this is meant to be something enjoyable. I just don’t want to be involved in a pissing contest, it just leaves every covered in urine, not pleasant.
This keeps me sane and I blog elsewhere but locally is much different, people know my name and what I say matters to me. I believe bloggers take themselves far too seriously at times but I do care what people think of me, probably too much. If I’m not considered a separate person then why bother?
Vern, thanks, I think the rift will have to heal itself.