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The Rantburg Manifesto
"The election is OVER, let's get back to the war on terror," declares Rodong Sinmun in a signed editorial today.

From Emily:
It's an honor and a privilege to serve Fred's little corner of the blogosphere. Whether you were aware or not, RB *is* read by some in the corridors of power, and it's always been my private fantasy that some of our news gathering and analysis in here translates to policy out there.

We're starting to see a decline both of "civil, well reasoned discourse" and useful hard news about the WoT lately here at RB. I'm getting tired of the stories about bias in the media, looney lefties, and so on. We GET IT, already, and there's plenty of blogs that discuss that stuff. I'm also concerned that the formerly high level of intelligent discussion has suffered lately. There's too much cussing and intolerance, and I worry that new readers will simply surf on by rather than stay and add to the fun.

From Steve W. of the Army of Steve:
The Rantburg community is blessed to have any number of opinions on domestic politics, religion, culture and the appropriateness of tittie bars in Peshawar. We're all fairly like-minded on the WoT, and that's what is important. We see the needs, we debate the issues, and we discuss the strategies. To do that we need information, and that is one of the primary reasons why the 'Burg exists -- to pull together the eclectic, useful stuff we need as raw material for our thoughts. No other blog does that as well as we do.

The election was part of that, and the election now is over. Rantburg needs to re-focus on the WoT. There's always a place for weird animal stories, but the peripheral political and cultural news is better discussed elsewhere (e.g., LGF, Polipundit, OldPatriot, OxBlog, etc). Like Emily says, we get it.

It's hard for the editors to edit the 'Burg, and it's hard for you the reader, with 100+ posts every day, especially when the majority no longer relates to the WoT. We need to retain our focus. The editors will do that, and we hope you will too.
Posted by: The Rantburg editorial staff 2004-11-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=48815