Tag Archives ⇒ blogging

Elizabeth Spiers on Early Blogging

October 24, 2025
· Martin Kelley

She describes a dif­fer­ent time, indeed.

Ear­ly blog­ging was slow­er, less behold­en to the hourly news cycle, and peo­ple were more inclined to talk about per­son­al enthu­si­asms as well as what was going on in the world because blogs were con­sid­ered an indi­vid­ual enter­prise, not nec­es­sar­i­ly akin to a reg­u­lar publication.

I appre­ci­ate her com­ments on invest­ed read­ers. The num­ber of peo­ple who were part of the “Quak­er blo­gos­phere” back in day was not that large but some­thing about the cru­cible of the writ­ing and debat­ing meant that they devel­oped ideas that have out­sized influ­ence today. The same sorts of con­ver­sa­tions con­tin­ue to hap­pen today in cor­ners of Face­book, Red­dit, and Dis­cord but there’s not the same sort of feel­ing of shared community.

Requiem for Early Blogging
Requiem for Ear­ly Blogging 

As part of Talk­ing Points Mem­o­’s 25th anniver­sary, I wrote an essay on ear­ly blog­ging, and what I…

Elizabeth Spiers Eliz­a­beth Spiers 

TV wars

June 25, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Hav­ing start­ed out my blog­ging life as a writer on non­vi­o­lence, I must admit it’s hard to real­ly respond to this week’s mil­i­tary actions with the grav­i­ty they deserve. Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions like AFSC and FCNL are speak­ing out, as they must (“We must act now” and “You can’t bomb your way to peace”) but I can’t get over just how much the­ater this all is. Pres­i­dent Trump gave Iran advance warn­ing of the incom­ing bunker bombs, plen­ty of time for Iran to get its stock­piles of near-weapons-grade mate­r­i­al out of har­m’s way. When Iran retal­i­at­ed with mis­siles against U.S. bases in Qatar, they too gave advance warn­ing, giv­ing the U.S. anti-missile defens­es the heads-up need­ed to defend and destroy the incom­ing barrage.

In reports, Trump is said to have decid­ed on the Iran attack in part because he felt Israel was get­ting such “good press” for its attacks against Iran (not sur­pris­ing­ly, he fix­ates on Fox News cov­er­age, which was all-in for Netanyahu’s attacks). U.S. mil­i­tary intel­li­gence says the attacks on For­do, Iran’s pri­ma­ry nuclear-enrichment site, only delayed a pos­si­ble cre­ation of a nuclear weapon by months. Why gen­er­ate such ill-will for such a tem­po­rary advantage?

Of course, would we even be in this mess if Trump had­n’t scut­tled the hard-won nego­ti­a­tions of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal frame­work. Even at the time it seemed like Trump was most­ly act­ing out of jeal­ousy that a long-term solu­tion had been the result of his pre­de­ces­sor’s work. There does­n’t seem to be any over­ar­ch­ing log­ic to any of this. It’s all for the TV cov­er­age (the rest of the world’s lead­ers seem to have fig­ured this out). Is there a real­ly an end-game to Israel assas­si­nat­ing so much of Iran­ian lead­er­ship, includ­ing some of the very peo­ple who were nego­ti­at­ing deals? And in the midst of this, a real solu­tion to the Pales­tin­ian — Israel con­flict seems fur­ther away than ever.

Peace­ful con­duct is the best way to set up peace­ful res­o­lu­tions. Iran has always been a coun­try with poten­tial. Encour­ag­ing it to give up nuclear and ter­ror­is­tic ambi­tions, promis­ing it last­ing safe­ty, and slow­ly inte­grat­ing it back into the world econ­o­my is real­ly a win-win for all sides. So why all this the­ater? What’s the end plan any­way? Or is that such a naive thing to even ask in 2025?

In defense of Quaker media

January 3, 2019
· Martin Kelley

I gath­er that the Quak­er Face­book group is going through one of its reg­u­lar debates about iden­ti­ty and tone and mod­er­a­tion. The prob­lem is Face­book. It is the most direct com­peti­tor of Quaker-produced media. Its algo­rithms and mod­er­a­tor tools are not designed for the kind of con­sid­ered, inclu­sive, Spirit-led, and non-reactive dis­course that is Quak­er style at its ide­al (yes, we blow it our­selves con­stant­ly but hope­ful­ly keep striving).

I post­ed there tonight sug­gest­ing that Friends con­sid­er a media diet that includes more Quak­er media — books and mag­a­zines and blogs and videos and in-real-life dis­cus­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties. I wor­ry that if Face­book groups become the most vis­i­ble style of Quak­er dia­logue, then we will have lost some­thing tru­ly precious.

This mes­sage isn’t new to long­time read­ers of Quak­er­Ran­ter. I extolled blog­ging as a hedge against Face­bookjust yes­ter­day and in August I wrote about some of the dia­logue prob­lems inher­ent in the Face­book mod­el.

I’ve been fig­ur­ing out Face­book strate­gies for Quak­er media since it opened up to non-students cir­ca 2006. I appre­ci­ate much of the atten­tion it’s pro­vid­ed over the years. Social media like YouTube has also been a use­ful plat­form for things like the Quak­er­s­peak projectdespite own­er Google’s spot­ty track record. But it’s becom­ing hard to deny that social media has reshaped the style of civ­il dis­course and troll­ish hack­ery, most­ly for the worse. I think it’s real­ly essen­tial that we become more con­scious of the sources of our dai­ly media diet.

Hey y’all, let’s start a blog!

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Okay, it’s not specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er – it’s not actu­al­ly at all Quak­er – but I like the think­ing behind Why You Should Start a Blog in 2019 by Ernie Smith in Tedi­um. Long-time read­ers will know I usu­al­ly have at least a post a year in which I blog about blog­ging. This time I’ll let Ernie talk about the ratio­nales and needs for a blog­ging culture:

We could use a lit­tle momen­tum. A decade ago, as I was get­ting start­ed with this, plat­forms like Face­book took advan­tage of our desire for a sim­pler option and used it to silo up our data, lock and key. We lost an excit­ing blo­gos­phere in the midst of all of this — and the first step towards get­ting it back is by real­iz­ing that own­er­ship should be a first class cit­i­zen, whether or not we even­tu­al­ly give away those words, sell them, or keep them close to our chest. A blog that you own, that you pay the host­ing bill for? That’s the first step — a form of expres­sion that should be the future (because after all, how awe­some is it that any­one can own a print­ing press?!?) but some­how became the past.

I haven’t been updat­ing this Quak­er Dai­ly Read as much as I’d like over the last month or so. That’s part­ly the result of an ear­ly Decem­ber vaca­tion and then the chaos of late Decem­ber hol­i­days with the fam­i­ly. I’m sure I’ve missed some great posts that I should have shared but there’s also days when I run through my RSS col­lec­tion (I use Feed­ly to fol­low about a hun­dred or so blogs) and find noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly fresh or inter­est­ing. I’d love to see more of us trad­ing the Face­book dopamine-rush imme­di­a­cy for some more thought­ful writ­ing and conversation.

https://​tedi​um​.co/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​0​1​/​2​0​1​9​-​i​n​d​e​p​e​n​d​e​n​t​-​b​l​o​g​g​i​n​g​-​t​r​e​n​ds/

Wait, a new Quaker blog, what retroness is this?

February 14, 2018
· Martin Kelley

And just as we’re talk­ing about the con­tin­ued down­ward entropy of blog­ging, here’s a new Quak­er blog. Isaac Smith of Fred­er­ick (Md.) Meet­ing (and Twit­ter) has the first post in a time-limited, “pop-up” blog. He’s call­ing it “The Anar­chy of the Ranters.” I’ll over­look the sim­i­lar­i­ty to this blog’s name in the hope that the peo­ple who have been drop­ping com­ments on mine since 2004 ask­ing about the dif­fer­ence between Quak­ers and Ranters will start both­er­ing him now.

The first post is “Defen­sive­ness as a The­o­log­i­cal Prob­lem for Friends,” a good blog­ging debut.

The ques­tion of who belongs in the church, which has always been of cen­tral impor­tance, is what’s at stake here, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is often being answered in ways that are hurt­ful and alien­at­ing — the oppo­site of what the gospel promises.

Jason Kottke on blogging, 2018 edition

February 14, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Two things on the inter­net that I con­sis­tent­ly like are Neiman­Lab and Kot​tke​.org. The for­mer is Harvard’s jour­nal­ism foun­da­tion and its asso­ci­at­ed blog. They con­sis­tent­ly pub­lish thought-provoking lessons from media pio­neers. If there’s an inter­est­ing online pub­lish­ing mod­el being tried, Neiman Labs will pro­file it. Kot­tke is one of the orig­i­nal old school blogs. Jason high­lights things that are inter­est­ing to him and by and large, most of the posts hap­pen to be inter­est­ing to me. He’s also one of the few break­out blog­ging stars who has kept going.

So today Neiman Labs post­ed an inter­view with Jason Kot­tke. Of course I like it.

There are a few things that Jason has done that I find remark­able. One is that he’s thread­ed an almost impos­si­ble path that has held back the cen­trifu­gal forces of the mod­ern inter­net. He nev­er went big and he nev­er went small. By big, I mean he nev­er tried to ramp his site up to become a media empire. No ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist mon­ey, no click­bait head­lines, no piv­ot to video or oth­er trendy media chimera. He also didn’t go small: his blog has nev­er been a con­fes­sion­al. While that traf­fic when to Face­book, his kind of curat­ed links and thoughts is some­thing that still works best as a blog.

Although I don’t blog myself too much any­more, I do think a lot about media mod­els for Friends Jour­nal. Its reliance on non-professional opin­ion writ­ing pre­fig­ured blogs. It’s a ful­ly dig­i­tal mag­a­zine now, even as it con­tin­ues as a print mag­a­zine. The mem­ber­ship mod­el Kot­tke talks about (and Neiman Labs fre­quent­ly pro­files) is a like­ly one for us going into the long term.

Last blog stand­ing, “last guy danc­ing”: How Jason Kot­tke is think­ing about kot​tke​.org at 20

November Flashbacks

November 4, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Once a month I’m doing flash­backs to past eras in my blog. 

One Year Ago: November 2016

A year ago the shock to the sys­tem was Trump’s elec­tion. One reac­tion of mine was a promise to blog more; I set up the sys­tem but I’m still not as fric­tion­less about it as I’d like. 

Wak­ing Up to Pres­i­dent Trump: We do not get to choose our era or the chal­lenges it throws at us. Only some­one with his­tor­i­cal amne­sia would say this is unprece­dent­ed in our his­to­ry. The enslave­ment of mil­lions and the geno­cide of mil­lions more are dark stains indeli­bly soaked into the very found­ing of the nation. But much will change, par­tic­u­lar­ly our naiv­i­ty and false opti­mism in an inevitable for­ward progress of our nation­al story. 

Five Years Ago: November 2012

Five years ago I wrote about how I had been blog­ging for fif­teen years. Do the math: it’s now 20 frig­ging years since I start­ed blogging.

Fif­teen Years of Blog­ging: I keep double-checking the math but it keeps adding up. In Novem­ber 1997 I added a fea­ture to my two-year-old peace web­site. I called this new enti­ty Non­vi­o­lence Web Upfront and updat­ed it week­ly with orig­i­nal fea­tures and curat­ed links to the best online paci­fist writ­ing. I wrote a ret­ro­spec­tive of the “ear­ly blog­ging days” in 2005 that talks about how it came about and gives some con­text about the proto-blogs hap­pen­ing back in 1997. 

Ten Years Ago: November 2007

Free­lanc­ing and work­ing the overnight shift at Shoprite, I won­dered if my Quak­er­ness was hope­less­ly use­less to my new circumstances.

Who are we part one (just what pam­phlet do I give the tat­tooed ex-con?): I love the fel­low who gave the mes­sage and I appre­ci­at­ed his min­istry. But the whole time I won­dered how this would sound to peo­ple I know now, like the friend­ly but hot-tempered Puer­to Rican ex-con less than a year out of a eight-year stint in fed­er­al prison, now work­ing two eight hour shifts at almost-minimum wage jobs and try­ing to stay out of trou­ble. How does the the­o­ry of our the­ol­o­gy fit into a code of con­duct that doesn’t start off assum­ing mid­dle class norms. 

Twenty Years Ago: November 1997

Four years before 9/11, I was ask­ing how we could break the cycle of terrorism.

How Come the U.S. Trains All the Ter­ror­ists?: It would seem a sim­ple case of U.S. mil­i­tarism com­ing home to roost, but it is not so sim­ple and it is not uncom­mon. Fol­low most trails of ter­ror­ism and you’ll find Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment fund­ing some­where in the recent past. 

Quaker Ranter Archives

October 11, 2017

Categories:

Quak­er: As the blog name implies, I am a mem­ber of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, known col­lo­qui­al­ly as Quak­ers. Many of my blog posts deal with issues of our soci­ety and its inter­ac­tions with the larg­er world. I’ve been blog­ging as a Friend since 2003. I read through a lot of Quak­er mate­r­i­al every day; much of the con­tent on Quak­er­Ran­ter is a cura­tion of the con­tent that catch­es my fancy.

Fre­quent top­ics of inter­est: Non­vi­o­lence, Media & Tech, Design, Fam­i­ly, South Jersey/Philly, and Pho­tog­ra­phy.

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Every Fri­day, that week’s posts are col­lect­ed togeth­er into a email newslet­ter. Here are the most recent editions:

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