The table is actually square
Or maybe there won’t even be a table. I’m not sure, really. It’s all very hush-hush you know. But a bunch of bloggers and other assorted writerly types who post stuff about music that may or may not be related mostly to southern gospel are getting together at NQC to talk about some things. Chuck Peters has a bit on it here (and “our reporter has learned” who may be participating because he was on the email list of people who said they’d come). NQC is giving us all press passes and may or may not be feeding us. There’s not a lot more to say about it than that. And if I DID say much more, I might have to kill you, or at least bum lunch off you if the food thing turns out for the worse.
What I CAN say, is this: Since I did most of what would pass for organization in this affair between the blogosphere and NQC, I should probably address the minor flap that this line in the release has managed to create:
“The Roundtable discussion will focus on the role blogs should play in Southern Gospel Music.”
The sentence is mine, but it comes from an idea that was originally David Bruce Murray’s. Early on and in discussing how to get the conversation going in a way that wouldn’t feel too formal or stuffy, DBM hit on the idea of asking a general question. As he notes here, his exact words were “What role do bloggers play in the Southern Gospel industry?”
I do remember liking the suggestion quite a lot. But that’s about it. I wish I could say I changed it to “what role blogs SHOULD play” because I was trying to provoke a livelier debate (the likelier explanation is that I was writing from an imperfect memory of DBM’s original and doing some sloppy elliptical thinking at the same time). At any rate, the result will probably be the same, judging by the little dust-up that the conditional already caused. If my variant creates a more interesting conversation, all the better.
Anyway, I can tell you my answer already: blogs should play whatever role the blogger and his or her readers make them play in the exchange of ideas and arguments and perspectives. What will be more interesting is putting all our different answers alongside one another and seeing what happens in the process.
However, I can neither confirm nor deny that I will be wearing a paper sack. Nor can I comment on reports that we will be meeting in a top-secret super-secure underground bunker beneath Freedom Hall that’s occasionally used by the Vice President when he must go into hiding from the special prosecutor’s office (Freedom Hall, Freedom Fries, They Hate Our Freedom … you see the connection, I trust). Pre-convention intelligence does suggest, though, that should our location be compromised, a flash mob may form demanding to know Daniel Mount’s THIRD favorite Cathedrals line up.
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My third favorite Cathedrals lineup | www.southerngospelblog.com on 15 Aug 2007 at 11:05 am
[…] All right, I’ll bite. Doug Harrison has a post on the bloggers roundtable with a hilarious punch line: However, I can neither confirm nor deny that I will be wearing a paper sack. Nor can I comment on reports that we will be meeting in a top-secret super-secure underground bunker beneath Freedom Hall that’s occasionally used by the Vice President when he must go into hiding from the special prosecutor’s office (Freedom Hall, Freedom Fries, They Hate Our Freedom … you see the connection, I trust). Pre-convention intelligence does suggest, though, that should our location be compromised, a flash mob may form demanding to know Daniel Mount’s THIRD favorite Cathedrals line up. […]