Last week we had quite a time for ourselves here at the blog. Monday we reached 2000 posts, Wednesday we found ourselves in Private Eye (again) and if that weren't enough to fill our cup of joy to overflowing we also registered hit counts two to four and a half times our usual 1000 or so a day.
Let's be honest, none of that was about us. It was RDK that interested the Eye not S&BCB and those extra page views were mostly* the result of Edward Winter linking to us in his most recent Chess Explorations column at Chessbase.
We're pretty much back to normal as far as I can tell. I picked up one or two followers on Twitter and perhaps some of last week's new visitors will stick around I suppose, but otherwise it's as you were. Maybe that makes now the perfect time to step back from the details and ponder the question of why we do what we do. Why do we write this blog and why do you read it?
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Justin has been busy recently. You may have noticed the article or two he's produced on the subject of Ray Keene's plagiarism and generally shoddy journalistic practice.
Yes, maybe you've noticed. And maybe your response to each newly appearing piece has become (or always was) 'bored now', 'enough is enough', 'you've made your point, time to move on', 'this is hardly news' or something about the benefits of lashing equine livestock. I know at least some of you feel this way because, aside from the comments we've had, some of you have been kind enough to tell me so to my face. Perhaps many of the rest of you feel the same way.
And yet the flood of visitors we had last week, not to mention our (well, Justin's) appearance in what by chess standards is the mainstream media, demonstrates very clearly that there is a market for this kind of material.
Not that you'd ever know that from what by our standards is the mainstream chess media. Chessbase's introduction to Winter's piece was doublethinktastically amusing in this regard. "The Editor of Chess Notes steps back from the details of the case" they said, in order "to reflect on how the game's media outlets cover controversies and what constitutes chess news". As if they weren't one of them. As if they didn't share the same very partial and limited view of what chessers might want to read with all the others.
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It's rather reminiscent of all that icky de Mooi business. Where was Fred Friedel then? Or the British Chess Magazine or Chess come to that? On holiday perhaps? Busy auditioning for the part of Constable Savage in a Not the Nine O'Clock News revival? Simply not bothered?
Well I don't know about the others, but one person very much involved at the BCM was interested. Interested enough to send me two unsolicited messages asking what I knew about the events of Sheffield 2011 and the subsequent fallout, anyway. Too busy to answer when I sent a reply suggesting an article on the matter, but the issue was very much on his agenda. He just didn't want it on his readers', apparently**.
It was ever thus, I suppose. I've mentioned the baffling editorial policy of the 1970s British Chess Magazine before (WwwK XVIII). Probably one of the starkest example is their coverage of the 1976 Amsterdam tournament***. Specifically Korchnoi defecting from the Soviet Union as soon as it was finished.after it. A story of more than passing interest to amateur chessers you might think - and Viktor legging it was even considered to be sufficiently newsworthy to justify a front page article in The Times - but it didn't earn so much as a cursory mention in a specialist chess mag. Forty years on that seems laughable. Are things really any different today, though?
As it was four decades ago, so it was two years ago, so it is now? Consider the various adventures of Sabrina Chevannes this summer:
All three are valid stories. Which one do you think won't be appearing in print any time soon? It's the kind that of tricky multiple-choice question you might expect to see on a daytime TV phone-in.
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Yes, I know the whole print media as an industry is struggling****. Yes, I know that not everybody cares about the stuff that the chess press doesn't cover. No, I wouldn't expect a print magazine to give the sort of coverage to Ray and the other stuff that we do.
Time and again, though, we get weeks like last week when the oft-repeated claim that this kind of material isn't published because nobody cares is exposed as nonsense. My conclusion: it doesn't appear not because the readers don't want to see it, but because - for whatever reason - the publishers don't.
So, no, I don't think that Chessbase and the rest of the mainstream chess media are covering themselves in glory today any more than they ever did. Still, credit to Fred's mob for at least running Winter's piece and allowing him to link to us (and to Chess Cafe who Justin tells me haven't written anything themselves, but have drawn attention to each of his RDK posts). That's a considerably better effort than the nothing we find elsewhere.
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Which brings us to the question of what we are doing hanging about in this particular corner of the internet. Neither writing nor reading 2000 posts takes talent necessarily, but it does require a certain commitment. Even if that's a just a euphemism for a pigheaded refusal to turn off one's internet and go out and do something more socially useful instead, it can't be denied that there's effort involved here. What's that all about?
Well, for those of us on this side of the blog I think it's us enjoying the opportunity to write about what we want to write about. Justin, I'm quite sure, is just as aware that his Predecessors series gets on the tits of some our readers as I am conscious of the dip in our page views whenever the rooks and pawns come out. Equally, Martin's Chess in Art and Asylum started as much by accident as anything else. If he'd have sat around and thought about what would be popular they'd never have seen the light of day.
What of the other side of the coin? Seven years in and I'm still surprised and delighted that anybody at all visits these pages. Why do you do it? I wouldn't presume to say. My best guess, though, is that it might have something to do with the fact that there seems to be a reasonable overlap between the subjects that we happen to enjoy writing about and those that the mainstream press don't care to prod with the proverbial ten foot pole.
There's something appealing, I think, about an opportunity to read the kind of writing - be it subject or style or attitude - that you struggle to find elsewhere. We ain't perfect by any means, but neither are we trolling or churning out pap just to fill space. Even - perhaps especially - when you don't particularly care for our topic of the day, a certain authenticity comes as part of the package.
You might not give a toss about our subject of the day, but you can be sure as shit you know that we do. For what my opinion is worth, I think this is the main reason why there are folk who are kind enough to drop by and take a look from time to time*****.
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So, if it's all the same to you, why don't we all just keep on doing what we do? We'll keep writing not giving a sliver of a stuff about whether anybody will actually want to read what comes out and you'll keep turning up or not as you see fit. If every now and then we stumble into something you happen to
we'll consider that a bonus.
How's that for a deal?
* A fair chunk of the Monday action was folk looking for Let's Talk About Nigel
** The same fellow, I mention as a by-the-by later sent us a message (via an intermediary) asking if we'd remove W(h)ither the British Chess Magazine?
*** See the October 1976 BCM (No. 10 Vol. 96)
**** As it happens, I came across a piece on the forthcoming death of journalism by Christina Patterson even as I was writing this post.
***** That and habit.
Let's be honest, none of that was about us. It was RDK that interested the Eye not S&BCB and those extra page views were mostly* the result of Edward Winter linking to us in his most recent Chess Explorations column at Chessbase.
We're pretty much back to normal as far as I can tell. I picked up one or two followers on Twitter and perhaps some of last week's new visitors will stick around I suppose, but otherwise it's as you were. Maybe that makes now the perfect time to step back from the details and ponder the question of why we do what we do. Why do we write this blog and why do you read it?
Wrong kind of bishop
Justin has been busy recently. You may have noticed the article or two he's produced on the subject of Ray Keene's plagiarism and generally shoddy journalistic practice.
Yes, maybe you've noticed. And maybe your response to each newly appearing piece has become (or always was) 'bored now', 'enough is enough', 'you've made your point, time to move on', 'this is hardly news' or something about the benefits of lashing equine livestock. I know at least some of you feel this way because, aside from the comments we've had, some of you have been kind enough to tell me so to my face. Perhaps many of the rest of you feel the same way.
And yet the flood of visitors we had last week, not to mention our (well, Justin's) appearance in what by chess standards is the mainstream media, demonstrates very clearly that there is a market for this kind of material.
Not that you'd ever know that from what by our standards is the mainstream chess media. Chessbase's introduction to Winter's piece was doublethinktastically amusing in this regard. "The Editor of Chess Notes steps back from the details of the case" they said, in order "to reflect on how the game's media outlets cover controversies and what constitutes chess news". As if they weren't one of them. As if they didn't share the same very partial and limited view of what chessers might want to read with all the others.
Well I don't know about the others, but one person very much involved at the BCM was interested. Interested enough to send me two unsolicited messages asking what I knew about the events of Sheffield 2011 and the subsequent fallout, anyway. Too busy to answer when I sent a reply suggesting an article on the matter, but the issue was very much on his agenda. He just didn't want it on his readers', apparently**.
It was ever thus, I suppose. I've mentioned the baffling editorial policy of the 1970s British Chess Magazine before (WwwK XVIII). Probably one of the starkest example is their coverage of the 1976 Amsterdam tournament***. Specifically Korchnoi defecting from the Soviet Union as soon as it was finished.after it. A story of more than passing interest to amateur chessers you might think - and Viktor legging it was even considered to be sufficiently newsworthy to justify a front page article in The Times - but it didn't earn so much as a cursory mention in a specialist chess mag. Forty years on that seems laughable. Are things really any different today, though?
As it was four decades ago, so it was two years ago, so it is now? Consider the various adventures of Sabrina Chevannes this summer:
- she stiffs a venue for two tournament's worth of unpaid rent (John Lewis III; John Lewis II);
- she has a book published;
- she wins the WIM title.
All three are valid stories. Which one do you think won't be appearing in print any time soon? It's the kind that of tricky multiple-choice question you might expect to see on a daytime TV phone-in.
Time and again, though, we get weeks like last week when the oft-repeated claim that this kind of material isn't published because nobody cares is exposed as nonsense. My conclusion: it doesn't appear not because the readers don't want to see it, but because - for whatever reason - the publishers don't.
So, no, I don't think that Chessbase and the rest of the mainstream chess media are covering themselves in glory today any more than they ever did. Still, credit to Fred's mob for at least running Winter's piece and allowing him to link to us (and to Chess Cafe who Justin tells me haven't written anything themselves, but have drawn attention to each of his RDK posts). That's a considerably better effort than the nothing we find elsewhere.
Happy side-benefit of ageing chess population:
I can hope that most of our readers will recognise this
Which brings us to the question of what we are doing hanging about in this particular corner of the internet. Neither writing nor reading 2000 posts takes talent necessarily, but it does require a certain commitment. Even if that's a just a euphemism for a pigheaded refusal to turn off one's internet and go out and do something more socially useful instead, it can't be denied that there's effort involved here. What's that all about?
Well, for those of us on this side of the blog I think it's us enjoying the opportunity to write about what we want to write about. Justin, I'm quite sure, is just as aware that his Predecessors series gets on the tits of some our readers as I am conscious of the dip in our page views whenever the rooks and pawns come out. Equally, Martin's Chess in Art and Asylum started as much by accident as anything else. If he'd have sat around and thought about what would be popular they'd never have seen the light of day.
What of the other side of the coin? Seven years in and I'm still surprised and delighted that anybody at all visits these pages. Why do you do it? I wouldn't presume to say. My best guess, though, is that it might have something to do with the fact that there seems to be a reasonable overlap between the subjects that we happen to enjoy writing about and those that the mainstream press don't care to prod with the proverbial ten foot pole.
There's something appealing, I think, about an opportunity to read the kind of writing - be it subject or style or attitude - that you struggle to find elsewhere. We ain't perfect by any means, but neither are we trolling or churning out pap just to fill space. Even - perhaps especially - when you don't particularly care for our topic of the day, a certain authenticity comes as part of the package.
You might not give a toss about our subject of the day, but you can be sure as shit you know that we do. For what my opinion is worth, I think this is the main reason why there are folk who are kind enough to drop by and take a look from time to time*****.
So, if it's all the same to you, why don't we all just keep on doing what we do? We'll keep writing not giving a sliver of a stuff about whether anybody will actually want to read what comes out and you'll keep turning up or not as you see fit. If every now and then we stumble into something you happen to
we'll consider that a bonus.
How's that for a deal?
* A fair chunk of the Monday action was folk looking for Let's Talk About Nigel
** The same fellow, I mention as a by-the-by later sent us a message (via an intermediary) asking if we'd remove W(h)ither the British Chess Magazine?
*** See the October 1976 BCM (No. 10 Vol. 96)
**** As it happens, I came across a piece on the forthcoming death of journalism by Christina Patterson even as I was writing this post.
***** That and habit.
