The experience was disappointing.

So my big moment in the paper came and went. Here's the Pioneer Press article from last Sunday (you may have to bugmenot that).

Before we even met the reporter, we got a message from Sean Bonner (father of Metroblogging), about the conversation he'd already had with him. So I was wary going in.

It was very cool to meet the other Metrobloggers. As always with bloggers, it's interesting to put faces and voices and mannerisms with the names and personas. We should do that again sometime. But with food and drinks and without the press.

The interview itself was... enh. It kinda seemed like he was looking for some sort of juicy dirt. We mentioned some topics that have proven to be popular and polarizing, and he kept digging at that. Someone said later that it sounded like he had the story in mind already, and was fishing for quotes from us to fill in. I don't think the article conveyed the essence of Metroblog very well. But then, the article wasn't just about Metroblog.

Julio said he stumbled across Metroblog quite on accident, and that he'd had kind of a hard time finding blogs around town that fit the description of what he was looking for for the article. To which I say, for the tech/internet guy who's supposed to be plugged into the local scene, this guy has no idea what's going in the TC blogosphere. I could have named a number of blogs that devote a lot of attention to local issues (that aren't politics). Or at least pointed him towards a number of places where TC blogs are listed, but it sounds like he doesn't have time to actually click through them all to find out.

My favorite part of the whole interview was when I said that I wanted to write for Metroblog because most people that read my personal blog (that would be what you're reading right now) aren't from around here, so most folks don't get what I'm even talking about when I mention what I do around town. And Julio says to me.... heh heh... he says to me, "They're not from around here because.... they're your parents?"

Now, maybe it's just a reporter thing where they ask these kinds of questions just to be extra careful and clear. But that said to me that he doesn't really get how blogs work. People that read me aren't from here because with blogs, you just click around when you see links and comments and you stumble across these people and if you like what they have to say, you keep reading. Every time one of us mentioned a website, he'd ask where we found it, and we'd always say "I don't know, I just clicked through from another blog."

So yeah. That was it.