blogging https://www.quakerranter.org/tag/blogging/ A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley Fri, 24 Oct 2025 18:36:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://i0.wp.com/www.quakerranter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/cropped-qr-512.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 blogging https://www.quakerranter.org/tag/blogging/ 32 32 16720591 Elizabeth Spiers on Early Blogging https://www.quakerranter.org/elizabeth-spiers-on-early-blogging/ https://www.quakerranter.org/elizabeth-spiers-on-early-blogging/#respond Fri, 24 Oct 2025 17:54:28 +0000 https://www.quakerranter.org/?p=315625 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
]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/elizabeth-spiers-on-early-blogging/feed/ 0 315625 TV wars https://www.quakerranter.org/tv-wars/ https://www.quakerranter.org/tv-wars/#respond Wed, 25 Jun 2025 22:12:10 +0000 https://www.quakerranter.org/?p=271648 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?

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/tv-wars/feed/ 0 271648 In defense of Quaker media https://www.quakerranter.org/in-defense-of-quaker-media/ https://www.quakerranter.org/in-defense-of-quaker-media/#respond Fri, 04 Jan 2019 03:00:49 +0000 https://www.quakerranter.org/?p=61645 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.

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/in-defense-of-quaker-media/feed/ 0 61645 Hey y’all, let’s start a blog! https://www.quakerranter.org/hey-yall-lets-start-a-blog/ https://www.quakerranter.org/hey-yall-lets-start-a-blog/#respond Wed, 02 Jan 2019 19:50:54 +0000 https://www.quakerranter.org/?p=61633 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://tedium.co/2019/01/01/2019-independent-blogging-trends/

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/hey-yall-lets-start-a-blog/feed/ 0 61633 Wait, a new Quaker blog, what retroness is this? https://www.quakerranter.org/wait-new-quaker-blog-retroness/ https://www.quakerranter.org/wait-new-quaker-blog-retroness/#respond Wed, 14 Feb 2018 23:54:23 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=59667 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.

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/wait-new-quaker-blog-retroness/feed/ 0 59667 Jason Kottke on blogging, 2018 edition https://www.quakerranter.org/jason-kottke-blogging-2018-edition/ https://www.quakerranter.org/jason-kottke-blogging-2018-edition/#respond Wed, 14 Feb 2018 21:56:51 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=59648 Two things on the internet that I consistently like are NeimanLab and Kottke.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 kottke.org at 20

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/jason-kottke-blogging-2018-edition/feed/ 0 59648 November Flashbacks https://www.quakerranter.org/november-flashbacks/ https://www.quakerranter.org/november-flashbacks/#respond Sat, 04 Nov 2017 20:00:00 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=58839 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.

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/november-flashbacks/feed/ 0 58839 Quaker Ranter Archives https://www.quakerranter.org/archives/ Wed, 11 Oct 2017 13:42:01 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?page_id=58805 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.

Newsletter Archives:

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

Blog Archives:

2026 • 2025 • 2024 • 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008 • 2007 • 2006 • 2005 • 2004 • 2003 • 2002 • 2001 • 2000 • 1999 • 1998 • 1997 • 1996 • 1995 • 1992


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2005 (66)


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2003 (87)


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