When I first set up Orient Lodge back in 2004, I wanted a central place where I could gather material I was writing for a couple years on various blogs and in other online discussions. I didn’t really think about what things would be like in five years and I am disinclined to make guesses about 2014. Yet things have changed a lot since those early days, and I received two messages that have caused me to stop and look a little more closely at the state of blogging in 2009.

These days, it is hard for me to keep up with all the email I get. A fair amount of it is from public relations firms hoping that I will write about the latest product they are pitching. Some requests are really good, some barely deserve the quick glance I give them before I delete them or file them away. Often, I reply, but do not receive a follow-up from the PR firm. Other times, I get fascinating replies that cause me to go to the library to do extensive research. I hope to have a few good blog posts up about some of these topics soon.

Getting press credentials back in 2004 to cover the U.S. Democratic Party National Convention in Boston gave me another insight into blogging. There are many events and conferences that seek good writers to attend and provide coverage, even if they are covering it in blogs. Since then, I’ve covered many political, technological, media, marketing, and even psychological events. I always go with trepidation. I am spending my own time and money to get to the events. While I have various ads on my blog, I do not work hard to monetize my site, and I certainly don’t get enough to cover the expenses of going to various conferences. Will going to a conference be worth the effort? When there are two concurrent conferences, which one will be the most interesting and which one will I be able to provide the most insights on?

Yesterday, I received an email from one conference organizer asking me to send her two or three writing samples related to the conference materials. I had several such articles available, which I quickly sent off, but it made me stop and think. Two years ago, I was invited to cover the same conference with no questions asked. Another conference that I covered in 2008 sent me a note that they no longer accepted bloggers or freelance journalists in 2009. This struck me as odd given that the number of full-time journalists covering their area of interest has decreased considerably during the same period. However, I subsequently found out that the attendance of that conference had declined precipitously since last year. Is the increased difficulty in getting press credentials as a blogger because there are more bloggers out there, or is it because the recession has very seriously hit the conference industry?

As to what to cover, yesterday was an interesting day. Kim asked me to attend the Informal Hearing on the Citizens’ Election Program. I was sure that not only would the traditional media be there, but some good representatives of the online media would be there. Sure enough, Christine from CTNewsJunkie was there. Christine is a great journalist who has covered the Capitol for a long time. Her writing is a good example of covering an event, and adding important background information to create a compelling narrative that helps readers understand the full context.

I had live tweeted the whole event, and aggregated those tweets into a CoverItLive stream. It was raw, blow-by-blow coverage, closer to stenography than reporting, but I was pleased to find that Christine linked to my coverage. Afterwards, we talked about how President Obama’s visit to Connecticut today was going to be covered by a pool reporter instead of allowing reporters from all the Connecticut news outlets in. I believe that this was a bad idea, and I subsequently found out that this has been reversed. I suspect that Christine will be covering the event, and as such, I don’t feel any particular need to go down and cover the event myself. Christine will provide the insights I am hoping to find, and I would probably not add a lot to the discussion.

I think this is an important thing for bloggers in 2009 to think about. These days it seems like everyone can blog. Are you, as a blogger, providing insights that people wouldn’t find elsewhere? If not, you might want to think about what you are writing and see if there are things that you care about, where insights like your own are not already being shared.

The other message that I received today was that someone has high jacked my advertisement. I use a 125x125 image of myself, flanked by red stripes and the words Orient Lodge across the top. I was told that someone was using this image to advertise their site on EntreCard, a site that has nothing to do with my blogging. As a general rule, I’m pretty laid back about allowing people to use my material. Typically, I invoke a Creative Commons license which allows people to copy my work if they provide proper attribution. Sometimes, I might also ask that the work be non-commercial or non-derivative, but I’m generally pretty willing to allow others fairly free use of my material.

However, the using of my 125x125 ad image to advertise an unrelated site is unacceptable. I did a whois lookup and found the owner of the domain that was using my advertisement. I sent a cease and desist email to this person and copied it to support at EntreCard. I encourage bloggers to be as flexible with licensing their material as possible. I want people to pick up my RSS feeds, my articles and to link back to my site. It is part of how I’ve grown my site to be as successful as it is. On the other hand, when someone does something that can cause confusion about my site and potentially decrease my traffic, I will, and how have, spoken up and defended my material. I encourage other bloggers to not only be flexible with the licensing of their material but also vigilant about material used inappropriately. This is another thing I just didn’t have to deal with five years ago.

Where will all of this lead in another five years? More and more, people are using audio, still pictures and video. I enjoy playing with this, but I really like the written word best. I hope my writing will continue to improve over the next five years, and that something unexpected, yet good will come of all of this. What do you think?