A Pause in the Global News Flow

There is, as a matter of fact, a pause in the flow of global debate news. Here are some of the reasons:

• The Asian Debating website has really slowed down lately. After a lot of stories now we have one or two a week. I know that Rashedul Hasan Stalin is involved in organizing a tournament and is a very busy person, but I hope he does not lose his enthusiasm for his blog because I use it and enjoy it.
• Colm Flynn's World Debating Website has been having server troubles. I assume that this will pass, but it is another important debate news website that I enjoy and use.
• Some other news sources (I won't name them, don't want to be critical of god efforts) have switched to using bulletin boards that I find harder to check. They are also difficult to post to because I have to formally join them, which I would prefer not to do.
• Some listservs I use have been very slow or else full of irrelevant nattering that is of no news value, such as flame wars and fantasy sports posts.
• Finally, I have been on the road and just returned from Yale, so even Global Debate has been slow since Thursday. I plan to make up for that today.

So, that is my read on the situation as October ticks away and we head towards November. Thanks for reading this site, probably the least read of all my websites.

Trying to Refine the Stream of Debate News

As each month goes by I post a lot of debate stories at Global Debate http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com. Last month I posted 60 stories, or about two per day. This post represents an attempt to improve on the news stream and how I choose things for inclusion.

There are some items which should not be carried because any fair addition of them would totally flood the system. These include:

• Stories in the local press about how XYZ high school did in the local tournament;
• Blogs of specific teams talking about how they did at a tournament;
• Local league announcements and business;
• Local tournament invitations and results.

On the other hand, there are stories I should probably continue to carry (and perhaps increase), such as:

• International tournament invitations and results;
• News about international debate organizations;
• News about debate appearing in new sectors of society;
• News about debate appearing in new and unexpected countries;
• New kinds of competitions and organizations;
• International debate rankings;
• Information about new instructional resources;
• Debate related things that are hard to believe;
• News about debate being staged and presented in new ways;
• International conferences and meetings related to debating;
• Reports from the debate frontiers and front lines;
• Other new and interesting things that will certainly happen.

I will be adding an infrequent editorial from time to time. Do not worry, it will be clearly marked as such.

I will also be restructuring the news feeds on the side of this page, which is where I get many of my stories.

I want to salute my fellow debate news gatherers who are a resource and an inspiration to me, such as the World Debating Website at http://worlddebating.blogspot.com/ of Colm Flynn as well as the Asian Debating Website at http://asiandebating.blogspot.com/ of Rashedul Hasan Stalin.