In case you missed it, Ben over at Not Larry Sabato put up a post yesterday slamming Loudoun Supervisor and blogger Stevens Miller for a blog post where he attacked Delegate Tom Rust for failing to show up at a Board of Supervisors lunch to discuss the upcoming General Assembly session. Rust responded in the comments of Millers’ blog – his personal blog – noting that he had a conflict and this was the first time he’d missed the meeting in ten years.
I’m sure there’s no love lost between the two men – Rust beat the pants off Miller when he tried to run against him for the House of Delegates in 2009, 55%-46%. But when you call out an elected official – and you’re an elected official yourself – and he responds, ignoring the post isn’t a good idea. At the very least, acknowledge what was written. Rust responded in a professional, calm manner – at the very least you would expect a cordial response. Maybe even an apology. Did that happen? No.
As of now, Miller is ignoring Rust’s comment.
And last night, on Twitter, Ben asked Miller’s wife Liz, also a blogger, why Miller would go after Rust and then not even respond when he got called on it. This started a Twitter exchange between Ben, myself, Lowell Feld, Liz and others about the incident. The reason why Miller hasn’t responded? Apparently, Miller doesn’t respond to comments on his blog – and that’s an official policy.
In his “About” section Miller writes “I will not be posting comments myself, however. My contributions will be the articles.” He notes that the site is going to be a personal blog about whatever he feels like, but a quick review of the articles posted make it clear that 90% of what he’s writing about is political.
Ben and I both noted that there isn’t a single Virginia political blogger that doesn’t respond to commenters in the comments. Even Lowell backed me up on this, and for us to agree on anything requires some kind of an alignment of the stars and/or an act of God. I said that I consider it arrogant, which started a wider conversation.
I do think it’s arrogant. As bloggers, we are writing and providing information and commentary to the people who take time out of their day to read what we write. We provide the service for free. Most of us aren’t trying to make money off the deal. We’re not journalists, we’re bloggers. It is, as I said on Twitter, the height of arrogance to adopt a policy where you basically tell your readers that your opinion matters more than theirs does, and you don’t have the time or the energy to bother engaging with them in conversation about the material you’ve written and they’ve read. It’s bad enough that some bloggers do that (as Liz noted, although no Virginia political bloggers do), but it’s especially bad when the person ignoring the commenters is an elected official.
Basically, Miller’s policy is simple – here are my opinions, I don’t care about yours. I honestly don’t know why he bothers blogging – he should just beg the Loudoun Times for a weekly column.
Blogging is about more than simply expressing your opinion. It’s a chance to discuss issues with the folks who read your stuff. I love comments. I like to respond to comments and I enjoy commenting on other blogs as well. By ignoring your reader’s comments, you’re basically taking them for granted. And that’s a good way to become irrelevant quickly. While I think I’m pretty smart, I am also smart enough to know that I don’t know everything and that my point of view on everything isn’t better than anyone else’s. That’s why I love comments and I love to respond to my readers – through discussion, we all learn things, and that’s a large part of why I blog in the first place.
Miller is, of course, free to do whatever he wants. It’s his blog, after all. But his policy is arrogant, it’s an aberration in the Virginia political blogosphere and he has not made any kind of a case as to why he can’t or won’t respond to his readers in the comments. The right thing to do here is to acknowledge Rust’s response – because Miller was implying that Rust didn’t show up because Rust knows something about redistricting that he’s not telling – apologize for trying to read into Rust’s conduct something that wasn’t there. That’s just good manners.
I won’t hold my breath that Miller responds, nor that he deign to explain to the unwashed masses that read his stuff why he’s adopted a policy that sets him apart from everyone else in our blogging community.
