Once again, making my annual list of Top Ten Blogs has been the kiss of death for one of the honorees. Magnus Wheatley has announced that he is shutting down his superb Rule 69 Blog to spend more time with his family and because he thinks "the sailing scene is pretty dull right now".
Magnus's brand of self-described "hand-grenade journalism" will be missed. Magnus denies that he is putting up the shutters because of any outstanding legal disputes but, given his penchant for outspoken, hard-hitting criticism of some the most deep-pocketed and litigious players in our game ( I'm sure you know who I mean) it wouldn't have surprised me if that had been the real reason.
And then there were nine. What am I going to do? Shall I change the list in my sidebar to Tillerman's Top Nine Blogs. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it? Or should I select a replacement?
5 comments:
Same thing happened to me... one blog I've been really enjoying as of late has decided to move on and away from blogging!
Aint it always the way?
Oh well... such is life.
Cyalayta
Mal :)
Do not deny Magnus his glory. Even if his blog is no more, his was a valued contribution to the world of sailing blogs.
Do not remove his blog's name from the list, and most especially, do not replace it with something else.
If the blog still exists but is no longer actively maintained, you might still leave the link in your list. If the blog has ceased to exist (or if you don't want to send readers to a dormant blog), keep the name in the list, but make it just the name, not a link, perhaps with something in parentheses like "(no longer active)".
All the content of Magnus's blog was removed yesterday. Makes me wonder even more if concerns about legal issues are part of the story here.
Aw, bummer. He even took it down? But I hadn't even gotten all the characters straight yet!
Now, can I ask some of you real sailing people - has the America's Cup ever gotten this insane before? I mean, anywhere you get a lot of money competing with a lot of other money for a big prize, things gets weird (see also: US Democratic primaries), but my folks were stationed in Sardinia, Italy, it the latter half of the 80's and everybody around there had Azzurra II fever. I seem to recall the excitement was mostly about what was going on on the water, not in a courtroom somewhere.
But then I didn't have a Rule 69 blog to read back in the 80's, so who knows what was going on behind the scenes & far from the pretty pretty boat.
Yes bonnie, there have been many fierce legal battles during the history of the America's Cup. Paradoxically it has been one of the most unsporting sporting events in the history of sport.
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