The trouble with blogging anonymity
There’s this new “network” of student-written blogs about campus. Called College OTR (too cool to spell out On-The-Record, or just figure people wouldn’t write it out), it allows students to blog about their campus. They have more than 30 colleges as part of their network, ranging from the Ivies to big schools like Penn State, and schools that have rich students, like us.
The feel of the site is very wannabe-Gawker media, except for students who don’t necessarily know they aren’t snarky. There are tons of problems with this model, mainly stemming from a lack of control over who’s writing. They allow not just anonymous comments, but anonymous bloggers too. In fact, I was alerted ? via our campus OTR, “Ithaca OTR” ? that a student at the University of Michigan was forced from his post at the Michigan Daily because of his anonymous blogging on the site.
As a sidenote: If you’ve never heard College OTR, it makes sense. We only have one person on our campus blogging there (good news: you can join, too!).
But oh that one blogger.
I’ve been reading Ithaca OTR for a couple of weeks; it got on my radar during the Dean Lynch thing. Going by the handle Treasure Troll, the blogger wrote scathing reviews of some Ithacan articles, the Ithaca Cheesesteak Emporium, and worked some snark on our fabled Intercom Roundups. My thought was that I’d let yipping dogs lie ? despite him calling The Ithacan’s blogs “lame” ? and hoped it would kind of blow over.
I was also hoping someone would get to the bottom of this and identify the blogger. There were some clues about who it could be ? someone obsessed with Park (writing about and putting down the dean) ? but no leads.
Well, he’s been identified. An anonymous commenter posted identifying information about the blogger on his own blog ? the gall! ? and forced him to come out. Who is it? Senior Mike Berlin. Don’t know him? He’s an editor at Buzzsaw Haircut and (perhaps more importantly) Fuse, the propaganda prospective student quarterly.
So here’s the thing. I don’t really care that he bashed The Ithacan. It comes with the territory. My immediate thought was this: Will he continue to cut down everybody? Or is it all about to get really tame?
High-profile anonymous bloggers have been unmasked before. Most famously, Fake Steve Jobs turned out to be a Forbes reporter, and in the case of Fake Steve, he keeps on rolling despite everybody knowing the true persona. That’s gutsy, but not everybody can do that.
Can Berlin do it? It looks already like he’s lost his bite. He avidly promoted Buzzsaw, and probably wants to keep that gig with Fuse.
Oh, and as for Berlin being recognized at some party? I was there; my sources tell me it was nobody special, just some lame blogger.
Feed for College Ave.
I would just like to out myself as the lame blogger. It was me, and I no longer wish to hide under this shroud of anonymity. And even though I do not support blogs, blog culture, blogging anonymity, or blogging when you know who the person is, all I know is that College Ave.’s Nic is SAVAGE when it comes to rapping Kanye songs. Case closed.
Hi Nic,
This is the infamous “but oh that one blogger.”
I would just like to thank you for, instead of letting me handle the situation myself, spewing facts about my campus jobs to the Ithaca College community, many of which do not even read the website.
The sad part is I don’t even think the blog is that bad in terms of the material it covers (I’m not assessing my apparently humorless posts, just the content). And I agree, there is a problem with blogging anonymity, but there is a bigger problem posed by this post in that when one searches for my name on the Ithaca College website, this appears as the second item (I bet you know didn’t even know that would happen, you sly dog, you!).
I had initially acted brashly to being outed on the site, and was planning on deleting the posts I had written to protect anonymity on a site that, as you claim, no one reads. By the end of this week the blog would’ve been over anyway, seeing that I wasn’t going to make quota.
I think it’s everyone’s responsibility to read the Ithacan each Thursday (for it does have important news), but that it can be taken with a grain of salt. But you’re ok with that too I guess!
I don’t think there really anything more to say. I would just like Nic to really pat himself hard on the back for not only creating such unnecessary turmoil for me this week (oh, and sorry you couldn’t get unto my facebook profile, I have three other campus jobs, not two), but also squashing an alternative source of light-hearted humor (with a capital “H”). So Nic, have a great break, I still don’t really know who you are, and don’t really care to find out. But I hope you’re pleased with yourself.
Sincerely,
Mike
hahaha BILL! blog culture?!
And this is why no one supports The Ithacan. It’s a bunch of students on a powertrip who will never go anywhere. Mike, I expect to see you places. Way to go.
So I don’t know this “Mike” who daylights as this “lame blogger” but I do know that this post by College Ave is quite the disappointment. What are you gaining from tearing apart another student? I don’t see how you can benefit from this. For you to brazenly ask “Will he continue to cut down everybody?” is quite ironic.
ALSO, as far as your post, it is filled with errors, just like every issue of The Ithacan. To say that no one reads CollegeOTR is a lie, because there happens to be quite a few people who pay attention to it, obviously, as you did yourself. It is quite large on other campuses and just because it isn’t as big here doesn’t mean it isn’t being read. For each person you think that doesn’t read it, there is probably that same amount of people not reading The Ithacan (and your blog). And Mike’s post make some good points, which you “forgot” to mentino. One major example is why was there a full-page spread on fake IDs and NO mention of the Essence Of Hip Hop?! A bit backwards, don’t you say?
Either way, great job Ithacan (and it’s quality bloggers). You’ve exposed a horrible man and all the horrible things he does. Or maybe you’ve just opened up your reader’s eyes to the fact that you’re “nobody special, just some lame blogger.”
@AnonAgent: This I See, our back-page photo essay, was a full-page spread on The Essence of Hip Hop. The Ithacan contains errors as all newspapers sometimes do; we’re a student paper and we’re learning. It happens. My words on not hearing about College OTR are specific to this campus, not all campuses.
And to all anonymous posters, I’m approving these comments despite your inability to put a real name - or e-mail address. Maybe you should think about standing beside what you write.
Sticks and stones can break our bones, but words can never hurt us.
They can, however, hurt you when you write anonymous, nasty blog posts about the Park School’s dean, and then are forced to account for your blog’s cruelty publicly.
I am not a journalist nor ever will try to be, and as a member of the public, I feel no need to announce my identity to stand by what I write. I don’t know either of you personally so I have no bias. I am speaking for many.
Photos of the Essence of Hip Hop were nice, but where was the STORY. That was a much bigger topic Accent should have covered. Stories about Fake IDs can be run anytime, but this was a timely event that celebrated multiculturism and a few photos do not suffice. This was in no way particularly your fault, but if you’d like to argue, go ahead.
So stand beside your sub-par writing and shame us all for pointing out facts. Either way, you still wrote a mean and hypocritical piece about someone “cutting down others” when that is exactly what YOU did.
Hey all,
This is me (for the last time I swear!). I would really appreciate if we left things how they are. I think there is an irreconcilable clash of point of views here. Unfortunately, this has gotten much more attention than I originally planned (operating under the assumption that IC OTR wasn’t widely read, which is stated above). unfortunately, OTR doesn’t operate under Ithaca College, which makes this forum extremely hard for me to participate in.
I don’t think my criticisms of Dean Lynch were particularly “nasty,” (the same kind of stuff, perhaps less snarky, appeared from Matt Quintanilla over the summer when he writing here). In general, I was addressing the fact the there was no public announcement of the departure, aside from strange Park niches, like the Ithacan. So please, if anyone wants to discuss further, send me an email.
-Mike (done for good!)
Not only are you criticizing Mike for being critical–which good journalism, if you can call CollegeOTR such, should be–but you are crusading against anonymity without ever revealing your own name. (Not that I think you should be required to.) Anonymous rabble rousing is problematic, but so is character assassination and hypocrisy.
@AnonAgent Fan: Do you mean me? One of the two authors of this blog? Nicolas Barajas, senior CMD major. It’s on our about page. And for the record, I wasn’t criticizing Mike for being critical, but for hiding behind anonymity to throw barbs, and then stopping.
@Mike, I wasn’t saying your writing was particularly harsh, and it certainly was no worse than what Matt wrote. And I agree with you; let’s put this thing to rest.
[...] nasty things about nice people last semester. So how’d we deal with that situation? After we outed him, he quit. It works, people, it works. Just find these people and reveal them, and the world [...]