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The Station Across Town: A Lincoln Boyhood, the Federation I Did Not Watch, and the Second Half of a Television Diptych

When I was sixteen, I had a television show called Kidding Around on KOLN/KGIN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was 1981. I was a teenager hosting a teenager-aimed program on a commercial CBS affiliate, three blocks of which I have no doubt were paid for by advertising for Pepsi and Levi’s and the Lincoln car dealerships that kept American local television alive in the early Reagan years. The format was loose. The show featured kid interviews, viewer letters read on air, and unscripted segments of the kind that the FCC’s mandates for “ascertainment of community needs” were supposed to encourage and that the FCC’s 1981 decision to deregulate radio, followed by the parallel television deregulation of 1984, was designed to kill. Kidding Around did not survive into the late 1980s. It was a casualty of a specific federal policy decision documented in the book I published earlier this year, Selling Saturday Morning.

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The Path of Anathema: First, Always Do Harm!

First, we had Unethical American Dentistry, and now — perhaps thanks to Obamacare — we have certain American physicians who are playing loosely with the truth when it comes to telling patients if they are “in-network” with their insurance plan, and providing the right, covered, care for their patients. “First Do No Harm” is not an oath to these doctors, it’s a cue down the path of anathema!

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Boles Blogs is Six Years Old!

This week, Boles Blogs is six years old — we’ve been around under many different names and edifications for over 15 years or so — but Boles Blogs is now how we currently roll in blog publishing!  That’s a pretty amazing conflation of time and effort and the pressing of days into years!  The slow roll from the “Boles Blogs Network” of 14 blogs into this megasite of just “Boles Blogs” today was a long and hard road to haul, but we made it, and the pathway ahead is bright and well-lighted.

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Why 14 Blogs Became Boles Blogs on WordPress.com Business

For several years, I have published, and edited, and managed, a 14-blog strong consortium of blogs loosely called “The Boles Blogs Network” right here on WordPress.com.  It was a great delight publishing all those blogs, but now that WordPress.com is bundling services for single blogs, it started to become clear to me that I needed to condense and consolidate my blogs in order to keep them not just alive, but thriving. Out of 14 blogs, I initially kept three blogs:  Boles Blues, the newest and fastest growing, GO INSIDE Magazine, the first online entity that found great success in publication, and Urban Semiotic, the first blog I owned on WordPress.com.

Going from 14 to three blogs was an eye opener.  Everything was faster to publish and articles were easier to find.  As I began exploring the WordPress.com store, I saw a Pro Blogger bundle of services for $99.00USD per year and a “Business” class of service for $299.00USD a year.  Here is what the WordPress.com Business bundle offers:

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Creating a Publication Network with Google+ Pages

Yesterday, Google finally made Google+ Pages available to the masses.  I immediately logged in and started creating pages for all the web properties I own, and I’ll tell you why I decided to spend an afternoon clicking and linking on Google+.

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2011 WordPress.com Wants After One Year of Hosting 14 Network Blogs

Here we are, a year later, after making a triumphant Boles Blogs Network return to WordPress.com.  We temporarily left WP.com to unwittingly head into the gaping maw of a horrible experience with a self-hosted Movable Type installation — but we quickly remedied our dismay and rejoined the Automattic servers.

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Organizing the Boles Blogs Network with the Paper Notebook Technique

Before there was the Boles Blogs Network, there was just Urban Semiotic and planning articles was simple. Either I was writing an article for Urban Semiotic or Go Inside Magazine — not too difficult. More blogs were added — three, here, four there, then three more — until the 13-blog strong Boles Blogs Network was created.  Across the network, we cover all the niches of living. By the time we hit that magical number 13, I had a problem — no good way to keep up with knowing when I hadn’t written an article for a blog in a long while, and what I was planning on writing for any given blog.

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Why the Boles Blog Network Moved From Movable Type Back to WordPress

Two years ago this Urban Semiotic blog was hosted right here on WordPress.com.  Then, we moved this blog first to Media Temple and then to Pair Networks on the — we were soon to learn — unwieldy Movable Type blogging platform from Six Apart.  Matt Mullenweg sent me a kind private note to wish us well on our departure for Movable Type.  This article details our Movable Type hoary road and the bright path we beat back to WordPress.

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Fifty Articles Written in Seven Days

From January 10-16, 2009, the incredible Gordon Davidescu and I published 50 new articles — you’re reading number fifty right now —  in the Boles Blogs Network!  That is an incredible and unbelievable new publication record that didn’t happen by chance or circumstance.  Gordon wrote 13 network blog articles and one Go Inside Magazine article and I wrote the rest.

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