I would like to introduce you to a new blogosphere feature – the Carnival of the Capitalists. This new weekly summary, modeled after the Carnival of the Vanities, is intended to bring you the best blogging each week in business, economics, and related fields. Jay Solo and I came up with the idea because of the recent increase in business related blogs and the difficulty in reading all the good commentary.
We have several goals with the Carnival of the Capitalists. First off, to provide a good summary of the best posts to those who don't read business blogs every day. Secondly, to allow readers to try out a new blog by reading that blog's best post of the week, instead of on some random day when maybe the material isn't as interesting. Lastly, to encourage more and better business writing by those who participate.
We have solicited advice from several people on this, and received many good ideas. For now though, we decided to keep it simple and let it grow into whatever the participants want to make it. There are only two rules so far.
1)The post you send in must have something to do with business, economics, finance, stocks, taxes, accounting, etc. There is plenty of leeway here as it could be a personal experience with good/bad customer service, something about a business leader, in-depth commentary or fisking of a post on another blog or an article in the financial press, an econmic analysis of a recent political move, pretty much anything as long as the focus is related to business or economics.
2)You can only submit one post. Yes some bloggers write better, some write more often, but for now we are limiting each blog to one post. You can submit a post from another blog if you really like it, but if that blogger submits his/her own post and it is different from your submission, we will choose the latter. We all have posts from time to time that we think are really good but, for whatever reason, don't get much response. This is your chance to pick that one favorite post of yours and put it in front of a larger audience.
Posts will be up on Monday morning, but may be posted as early as Saturday afternoon (which will be the unofficial cutoff for the week). Since this is the first week, we will extend the period, and the first Carnival of the Capitalists will be posted on this site, BusinessPundit, on Monday Oct 13th. The second week will be hosted by Jay Solo on Oct 20th. Jay has put up a permanent web page for this here that can answer your questions, and has set up an email address, capitalists-at-elhide.com, that will automatically forward submissions to the host for that week. If you would like to be a host, contact Jay and he can set you up with a week. Comments and ideas are welcome and appreciated, just contact me or Jay. Submissions for this week can be sent to Rob-at-businesspundit.com.
A few other points deserve mention. Despite the name, you don't have to be a capitalist to submit. Posts criticizing capitalism are welcome, but will be posted at the bottom of the page (just kidding – they will get fair placement). Also, you don't have to be a regular business blogger to contribute a post. Any relevant post is welcome. The only thing we ask is please don't submit just a short linking post or a couple of sentences simply because it was all you posted that week – make it worthwhile for those who may want to check out your blog. We will give this a few weeks, and as long as there is an interest, we will keep it going.
Please pass this information on to anyone you know who may be interested. The blogosphere is a big place, and I want to make sure everyone who wants to contribute a post gets a chance.
