'Orange County Local News Network' Just Spammed My Blog!

Now, that's got to be a compliment, or something!

I saw Mike Reicher and Gretchen Meier at last night's Newt Gingrich lecture. They were sitting right in front of me, on the floor actually, during the talk. In fact, that's Mike Reicher on the right in this picture, where we see Speaker Gingrich exiting stage right:

The truth is, I would have never even known who the hell Mike Reicher and Gretchen Meier were until someone at "Orange County Local News Network," their online magazine, spammed my comments. They left a link to their story on the event last night, "Gingrich Riles Irvine Crowd With Jobs, Other Proposals."

Here's a screencap of the editorial staff, at the introductory essay, "Hello, Orange County!":

Look, I've been blogging long enough to know some of the do and don'ts of the trade, and one thing these folks might want to do is get to know who's out there blogging on the issues before they start making theirselves at home in the comments with advertising links. I'll give 'em credit though: It's a pretty gutsy move to a launch magazine start-up in this economic environment. But if they're adopting an old-school hierarchical mindset, they're going to be in for some epic fail. Folks might remember what happened to Hollywood Today. Editor and Publisher Jeffrey Jolson actually went so far as to allege libel in an e-mail to me, and I told him to take a hike (see, "Jeffrey Jolson, Publisher and Editor-in-chief at Hollywood Today, Responds to Absence of Source Attributions at Tareq Salahi ATFB Story").

Thus, my suggestion to the editors at Orange County Local News Network is understand that there is NO HIERARCHY anymore. Bloggers take down the media's big boys all the time nowadays, so it pays to learn the lay of the land. In this case, a link first THEN a track-back would have been perfectly legit. Indeed, that's how you go about making folks feel appreciated, and in turn you might get some links thrown back your way. So, yo! You sho' wanna be keepin' good with us homies (citizen journalists) of the blogosphere! Because, man, sometimes "It's REALLY Hard Out There..."