I was kidding in a previous link about the NY Times stalking me. But now my referral log shows that the Times is running a link to my blog today: Guatemala News - Breaking World Guatemala News - The New York Times.
According to the little pop-up window, the editors of the Times monitor my blog and link to it intermittently, perhaps using a "robot" triggered by key words. I can only assume that a robot picked up my John Yoo post for their Guatemala page because I kept mentioning Guatemala and torture.
I'm tickled. They're paying attention to me! I have a strange psychic link to the Times, ever since I worked in its legal offices on 43d Street back in the '90s. I used to have epic dreams set in the Times building, and even years later, in California, I would find myself taking a night-time elevator to the board room. The most memorable dream while I worked there was when the elevator kept on going above the fifteenth floor penthouse and hovered over the building. ??? You can imagine the Times lawyers thought this dream was pretty wacky - because of course I shared it with them in the morning. I was a very fast and efficient legal secretary and I tried to express my intuitive side on the job, just to keep everybody awake.
In those days the boardroom was plastered with photographs of New York Times company owners back to the nineteenth century, meeting and greeting famous men (and women). I remember a picture of Herzl on a bridge. There were enormous color portraits of Sadat and the Shah, placed on a sideboard flanking an almost life-sized crystal swan. This was in early 1992 or so, and President G.H.W. Bush's portrait had its own spot at the head of the room next to an American flag. Sulzberger Sr., an ex-Marine, was the chairman of the board then and the photo placements were his doing (that and the candy dishes on the board table). To me these pictures say it all about the Times and its perceptions of the world.
So my feelings about the Times and its journalism are profoundly ambivalent. The Shah, Sadat, and Theodore Herzl are definitely NOT in my pantheon of history's heroes. Still I think it's cool that a little blog run by an obscure novelist and housewife in Oakland gets monitored by the editorial wizards at the Times website.
The internet is changing how information spreads.
I noticed that I also get a lot of referrals from the NY Times website to my blog.
Posted by: Maloof | April 13, 2008 at 04:51 PM
I went over to your site, Maloof, and I am really impressed. Everybody needs to visit "A View From Here" and see what's going on over there.
"A lot of referrals?" And here I am bragging about one...
Posted by: Leila Abu-Saba | April 13, 2008 at 06:52 PM
I think it has a lot to do with the subject matter that you/we are blogging about. You and I both link to them quite often in our blogs. The NY Times search mechanism must keep track of it.
Posted by: Maloof | April 13, 2008 at 07:25 PM
I tried figuring out how Blogrunner works. It's sort of a feed and it has human beings helping it. Since my blog is focused on Mideast topics, and yet the Times' Guatemala page picked up two of my posts based on the term used, I suspect that Blogrunner is a robot for the most part. But somehow I got myself listed as a blog their robot is watching. Perhaps that's no big deal, and millions of blogs are listed.
It's mindboggling, and best if I don't pay much mind. Anyway, looks like I only got a couple of clicks out of it. Sharon Astyk sends me ten times as many if I make an interesting comment.
Posted by: Leila Abu-Saba | April 13, 2008 at 08:17 PM
Mazel tov, Leila. You deserve the recognition.
Me I'm getting recognized by David Duke who just published my last post in the Guardian at his website. Can we trade places? All of my right-wing pro-Israel trolls are chortling w. pleasure at what David Duke has done. It's almost like Duke has to be a double agent for these people. Whatever he touches turns to dreck (that's s(^t for all those who aren't in the know).
Gee, I bet I link more to NYT articles than all of you combined & I can't remember the last time I got an NYT referral. They don't send any traffic my way. I was even interviewed for a front pg. NYT article once & I don't think I got any traffic fr. it (they didn't provide a link to my blog of course).
Posted by: Richard Silverstein | April 14, 2008 at 03:19 AM
I get 3-4 referrals a day with the tag mostly being "international". It will be interesting to see if yours will increase now that the NY Times has found you.
By the way, did you see my most recent post on Arab names? It seems that Saba originated from the name, Maloof.
Posted by: Maloof | April 14, 2008 at 06:53 PM