Major, major loss to the Oregon blogosphere
Paul Bausch is closing ORblogs. This is stunningly bad news.
I'm shutting ORblogs down now because the site continues to grow and the job of maintaining the site at the level I feel is necessary to keep it valuable has grown with it, putting it out of the bounds of a hobby. I wasn't able to make ORblogs self-sustaining financially (let alone turn it into a job), and I can no longer devote the time to the site that it needs to grow.I can understand where Bausch is coming from, but perhaps there is some way to keep ORblogs (or something like it) alive. It will probably take a lot of time and money, but don't we bloggers and blog readers think it would be worth it?
| Posted at 6:50 PM | Permalink |
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Comments (10)
It is so bad. Of course, I instinctively went to ping ORblogs with this post, and there's nowhere to ping to!
Posted by Jack Bog | September 4, 2008 6:59 PM
In a quest to keep up on all things in my old home state, it was the ORBlogs site that turned me to your Blog four years ago.
Though I maybe a lurker with an occasional comment to bojack.org, Paul's site allowed me to find a conduit to stay up daily on all things Portland and the state via a RSS Feeds.
I will always be thankful for that.
John
Posted by pdxileinOmaha | September 4, 2008 8:37 PM
Please e-mail Paul Bausch and tell him what you think. At the very least, he deserves a major retirement party, but let's talk him out of quitting! Or at least let's take up a collection, keep him going a little while longer, and have him pass the torch to a new webmeister.
Posted by Jack Bog | September 4, 2008 8:42 PM
People are talking about saving ORblogs here.
Posted by Jack Bog | September 4, 2008 10:42 PM
Yes, do jump over to Rick Turoczy's post linked above and chime in on ways you can help. Others are rallying to the cause; all is not yet lost!
Posted by Betsy Richter | September 4, 2008 11:17 PM
This is a HUGE bummer... ORblogs led so many people to my blog - people who would never have found my tiny corner of the Internet universe otherwise. A sad day, indeed.
Posted by Shannon | September 5, 2008 5:21 AM
Was the effort more valuable than the City of Portland giving unearned money to two city commissioner candidates to get their private messages out to the community, against each other?
Imagine what a $145,000 city gift (still illegal, but things are different here) to Paul could have achieved, at least in comparison to the other gift noted above.
One need not be a candidate as a prerequisite to having a message to get out to the public, even about things wholly unrelated to election to public office.
Paul's service was clearly more neutral than our government, which is supposed to be neutral, but isn't.
Posted by pdxnag | September 5, 2008 7:36 AM
Thanks so much for your post and for brining attention to this.
And turn that frown upside down, because I have some good news. I just heard from Paul Bausch, the creator of ORBlogs, and he's more than happy to help us create ORBlogs 2.0. He just doesn't want to run it and he doesn't think continuing on the current build will help.
So, we'll be working to make this next version of ORBlogs a community effort.
In any case, rest assured, we will save ORBlogs!
Posted by Rick Turoczy | September 5, 2008 9:48 AM
I am working on a Portland-only aggregator. Stay tuned.
Posted by Alan Cordle | September 6, 2008 8:06 AM
Good to hear, Rick: Keep me posted. While I may not be much help as I'm slammed running my own local aggregateor (BendBlogs.com), I'll do what I can.
Posted by Jake | September 7, 2008 9:41 AM