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KATHERINE VOLIN
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
When Pam Spaulding started her blog not quite two years ago, it was like performing in an empty theater.
“I was talking to myself, basically,” Spaulding says about her blog, Pam’s House Blend, available at pamshouseblend.com. “I don’t even remember when I got my first comment, but I was so excited that someone found my blog and read it. It was so strange to know that someone else was reading.”
Spaulding says her commentary now reaches more than 3,000 unique visitors a day and the site won the Best LGBT award from the 2005 Weblog Awards, where the best blogs in several categories are nominated and then chosen by readers.
“I had no expectation that I would be nominated,” Spaulding says. “I appreciated the support I got, but I’m not doing it for awards. That was probably the first time I realized that there were probably a lot more people reading than I imagined.”
According to the Weblog Awards results, Spaulding won 30 percent of the vote, with 3,530 supporters.
Spaulding often includes chunks of text from other sources, which she comments on, and occasionally includes her own reporting. Recent Pam’s House Blend postings included a caption contest for a photograph of President Bush, an analysis of new developments within the “ex-gay” movement and links to an article on a Supreme Court decision not to hear a gay parenting case.
“PAM IS CERTAINLY the most important lesbian blogger in America,” says Michael Rogers, editor and publisher of gay blog PageOneQ.com. “She’s a lesbian in a gay blogging world that is overwhelmingly gay men. She’s a blogger as a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world and she’s of color and the internet is so skewed to the privileged.”
As Rogers notes, blogging is a personality-driven media outlet. Spaulding’s readers, whom she affectionately calls “Blenders,” say that Spaulding’s personality propels the popularity of PamsHouseBlend.com
Part of her appeal, according to reader and fellow blogger Melissa McEwan, who blogs at ShakespearesSister.blogspot.com, can be found in her unique perspective as a black lesbian.
“She’s a black woman and she’s a lesbian — she calls it her hat trick — and that gives her an interesting perspective on a lot of issues,” McEwan says. “There are other black lesbian bloggers, but certainly not as many as you’re going to find straight white guys blogging.”
The existence of Spaulding’s blog demonstrates how gay news is changing. Keith Boykin, a gay blogger, activist and author, says that blogs have created a much-needed media outlet for daily black gay news.
“There’s really no other way to get daily news about the black LGBT community unless you read the blogs,” Boykin says. “There’s only a handful of black LGBT magazines and those are too slow. Most of the newspapers don’t cover black LGBT news, honestly. There’s not black LGBT television channel or radio station. The blogs are really the place to go to get the information.”
Boykin agrees that identity can factor significantly in maintaining a blog readership.
“Being black and gay and a blogger is actually a wonderful way to create a niche market or to tap into a niche market because there’s not a lot of people out there who are doing that,” Boykin says. “It’s an untapped universe and it has so much power and potential and black gays and lesbians are just starting to explore and exploit this whole thing.”
McEwan, who met Spaulding through their postings at Americablog.blogspot.com, a liberal site run by gay activist John Aravosis, says that Spaulding’s original reporting and sense of humor characterize her blog.
“I love Pam’s sense of humor,” McEwan says. “I think she’s a really good clearinghouse for topical gay rights issues. She does some really good reporting on the issue of the GOP reaching out to black churches, black ministers and exploiting homophobia in the black community. She’s done a great series on that.”
SPAULDING LIVES IN Durham, N.C. with her wife, Kate, whom she married in Vancouver in 2004. She says that she has always been interested in politics.
“I remember at my grandmother’s house watching [CBS political talk show] ‘Face the Nation,’” Spaulding says. “I didn’t understand it, but I watched it.”
After growing up in Durham, Spaulding moved to New York City and studied journalism and filmmaking at Fordham University. She returned to Durham in 1989.
Although Spaulding considers herself a citizen activist rather than a professional blogger, Boykin says those who post daily are distinguishable from other bloggers in action and effect.
“There are some people who are recreational bloggers and there are some people who are professional bloggers, and the professional bloggers tend to be more informed when they write because they don’t write to say this is what I had for breakfast today or this is who I’m going out with,” Boykin says. “They’re writing to say this is what’s going on in the world.”
The matters of the world have Spaulding concerned, particularly with regard to personal freedoms.
“I just see a terrible swing in this country where the government is intruding on those rights and freedoms and by and large the public is asleep at the wheel,” Spaulding says.
Despite her belief that Americans are suffering from blindness, Spaulding says that she has no aspirations for her blog to alter the course of contemporary American thought.
“When I see something outrageous I have to post about it,” Spaulding says. “I’m not looking for publicity or anything of that sort. I’m just typing what I feel and putting it out there and if people read it, fine, and if they don’t, fine.”
Nonetheless, Spaulding says she finds herself learning from the people who do read and respond to her blog.
“I find that I gain a lot of knowledge from people who comment,” Spaulding says. “I think without a commentary, a blog is nothing more than a diary of personal thoughts.”
SPAULDING LEANS LEFT politically and says she’s particularly interested in blogging about “LGBT issues, race, women’s rights issues, reproductive freedom and the religious right.”
Rogers says Spaulding’s reporting and posts about conservatives set her blog apart.
“She is the predominant blogger who is blogging on the radical right,” Rogers says. “She is the one out there finding all these little stories on [anti-gay conservatives], their little arrests and all that.”
Spaulding says she strives for justice in her pursuit of the unjust.
“I don’t want to call it ‘fair and balanced’ because it’s never fair and balanced, but I think I give equal heat to both sides,” Spaulding says.
Her identity strongly shapes the politics she analyzes in her blog postings, Spaulding says.
“Politics today in terms of gay and lesbian rights affects me directly, affects me profoundly,” Spaulding says. “There are people who are working to make my life hell. They see me as an enemy when I’m just a neighbor, a tax-paying citizen minding my own business, when I just call it like I see it.”
She still only blogs part-time, but Spaulding says that she can often be found posting or preparing posts at 4 a.m. so that she can work on her site while maintaining her day job as an IT manager at Duke University Press.
“I can’t do it full time,” Spaulding says about blogging. “I have to earn my keep.”
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