BLOGGING NOTES, HOUSEKEEPING AND POLICY CHANGESAhem. A rare address on the state of
Zenpundit. First, the blogroll.
I have added some newcomers to the blogroll - many thanks to
Dave Schuler of the
Glittering Eye and
Tom Scudder of
'Aqoul for their suggestions - more changes will soon be forthcoming but for now you can welcome:
Ann AlthouseBliss Street JournalChicago BoyzHistory UnfoldingSyriaCommentWindow on the Arab World, and More !A fine group of blogs worth your online time to peruse. The next batch of additions will remediate some topical or domain gaps on my blogroll that I believe need plugging. There will be a few deletions of dead or dying blogs or people whom I do not read that often and who, in the interim, appear to have gone insane or joined a sect of unreconstructed wingnuts.
Secondly, after some reflection, I have decided to
accept some degree of paid advertising from a reputable company which can be seen in the form of unobtrusive text ads in the margin. I have had inquiries in this regard in the past but have never accepted until now. Why alter my policy ?
While I do not need the money per se I do incur some costs from subscriptions to periodicals, online data bases and ( an exceedingly large number of) books that support my blogging that I might not otherwise have purchased. Moreover, I have plans for upgrading
Zenpundit in the near term that involve additional expenditures and it would be nice if the blog can self-finance at least some of these things.
Therefore, I will accept some sponsors who offer products or services that have nothing to do with the topics on which I usually write. If it could be reasonably construed as a conflict of interest I simply won't take the ad. Completely off-limits would be ads from partisan political campaigns or websites of an adult nature ( call it the "no politicians or whores" rule). Also rejected a priori are gaudy, bandwith sucking, banner ads or pop-ups because I find such things very annoying myself and do not wish to inconvenience my readers.
Other than that, let capitalism reign.