I really appreciated your comments and would have responded sooner but golf got in the way again yesterday.  For the life of me, as much as I love golf, after three tournaments in three days, I am amazed at how the professionals can keep up that pace.

To the point - yep.....I'm THAT Larry.  The Larry of Banned Camp Fame.  Briefly, as I don't want to be redundant, but it bears explaining, I used the word "ass" in a comment and was "banned".  Now, members of the Olympian staff would say I was "warned", which I equate to a referee telling boxers to keep their punches above the waist.  With such subjective rules as The Olympian uses for commenters, plus their "we retain the right to refuse service to anyone", it's not hard to garner a "warning".  In fact, Aaron Mason could issue a "warning" to someone just because he wants to, as there is no hard and fast rule, aside from some of the rather obvious, which it seems they ignore frequently.  I don't come close to agreeing politically with "SondraK" and yet a banning for telling someone to "go to hell" is silly, in my eyes.

I don't blame The Olympian for wanting to have civility on their thread, but if their enforcement isn't equal, civility will never take place.  I come from a media background and know the ropes as to how to push a point deep in debate.  That doesn't make me a bad person, but I'll guarantee that some people that oppose me certainly get frustrated.

When "Janet" started posting that there should be a call-in campaign to have me removed from being able to comment, that should have been an indicator to any journalist.  Ban one commenter because of popular demand and the next thing you know is that people will want to ban you.  The Olympian felt the pain of that one when they posted that video and readers became upset.  The next target in the war on free speech became them.

Whereas I would not have chosen to post such a video, I support The Olympian's right.  I exercised my ability to avoid viewing something that I knew would be questionable to my taste and don't quite understand why others can't do the same.  Now, on the other hand, The Olympian, in my opinion, should have (1) loved the amount of reader involvement this brought and (2) might have been smarter to use this issue as a "canary in a coal mine" for the direction of their content.  If you don't please your readers, you have no power to sell your product.

I consulted to a weekly in Oregon several years ago.  We retained a survey company from Portland to find out more about our readers.  It was a great sample response and a powerful message to the Publishers of what their readers liked and disliked.  I handed a copy of the results to the Executive Editor who looked at it for about 5 minutes and then replied "these people don't know what they are talking about".  He didn't get it.  The readers were telling him what he DIDN'T want to hear.

After my banning, I sent Vickie Kilgore a letter to critique an article and subsequent editorial about the hiring of Sheriff Dan Kimball's son to the force.  I told her that I was sending her the letter because I couldn't comment in the open product.  I basically said the story smacked of "nothingness" in terms of research and content and that the subsequent editorial was nothing more than The Olympian trying to criticize Dan's choice as a father, as opposed to saying that they were wrong in printing a story about a hiring that Dan had no control over.  She disagreed with me and I respectfully suggested that we "agree to disagree".  Unfortunately, that kind of thinking doesn't seem to work for The Olympian staff, at least in my experience in dealing with them.

I appreciate that the Docents of Olyblog are taking the time to examine the comments about the content of my writings and the placement.  I've sat in on hundreds of meetings about news budgets and it's a healthy way of presenting your product.  I'm confident that a good decision will be made

"There is only one race, the human race" - The Neville Brothers

I didn't see a reply option earlier, so I sent this to Emmett instead...

Thanks for raising this for further discussion. I do think that media criticism is important, and there is obviously enthusiasm among some of us for discussion of The Olympian and Haloscan comments. I have no problem with that.

My concern is that this type of meta-discussion is beginning to dominate and possibly redefine Olyblog. I figure if all of the past and future posts on this topic were make it to the front page, we might as well change the site's slogan to "We Are the Media Watchdog".

I think my concerns would be pretty well addressed by the suggestions you listed, including the creation of the Olympian Watch subforum. I also agreed with Rob Whitlock's suggestion that, if a post on this topic does hit the front page, the offensive comments shouldn't be displayed from there (i.e., put them after the jump.)

This is not earthshatteringly serious, but if you really think I'm only doing one sentence commentary to anything I submit, I'm going to suggest you haven't read much of what I've submitted.

Most people that know me say I talk too much.

As you'll see, as time goes on, I'm going to expand my coverage of local print media to other sources, but I've been wrapped up in a lot of extra work hours the past two weeks.  (to the folks that worry about the ratio of how much I work and blog, my work has gotten in the way of my blogging of late) 

I won't be writing novels, as that's not my style.

 I'm also considering a review of jazz, blues and R&B, as it's another passion of mine.

"There is only one race, the human race" - The Neville Brothers

Any item input into the community calendar is automatically placed on the front page and any person who signs up for an OlyBlog account can create an event. The assumption here is that local events are an aspect of being hyperlocal.

Outside of that we have nothing written down, just previous conversation about post promoting habits and etiquette. There does exist a real fuzziness to the "hyperlocal journalism" idea. Technically, if one Olympian is fascinated by Don Knotts and decides to regale us all with witty Knottisms, well...that is arguably hyperlocal journalism, although I can't imagine any of the current docent crop pushing that forward unless there were some explicit Olympia angle (Knott hair found in Oly toilet!)

No-brainer cases pop up: a review of something local, something witnessed in Oly, something directly affecting Oly, something coming to Oly, etc. Most of the time it's ridiculously obvious whether or not a blog post should be bumped to the front page, this time it hasn't been.