Interview with Top-Blogger Michael from Treehugger.com

Treehugger.com, a webzine growing in popularity everyday, is an information source on modern ideas to the age old crisis of environmental responsibility. It puts a today attitude to concerns like recycling and polution and is known all over the world. Fast becoming a renown source of information on all things ecological. One of their most popular writers is Michael Graham Richard, a 24 year old Canadian. The French speaking native learned English from music and the Internet. He recently sat down for an interview.

Do you remember the first weblog you ever read?

Unfortunately, I don't. I've been thinking very hard about this
question and I'm pretty sure that it must have been political/news
blogs not too long after September 11, 2001.

Why did you start blogging?

I started blogging part-time in 2003 on a personal blog on Blogspot
mostly to share a few cool things I found on the Internet and to have
an archive of these things for when my memory failed me.

Later, in late 2004 and early 2005 I started to write more about the
environment. I mostly did roundups of solutions and positive news I
found, and I was noticed by a writer from TreeHugger.com (a blog I was
reading daily) who asked me if I would like to write for them. I
started doing exactly that on May 17, 2005.

I started to get more and more involved with TreeHugger.com. Rapidly,
I was thinking about it day and night, writing a lot each day and
trying to help with behind-the-scenes projects.

In February 2006, while I was nearly at the end of my law studies (I
have two degrees, one in Civil Law and one in Common Law - the system
is a bit different from the US here in Canada), I started talking with
Graham Hill, the founder of TreeHugger.com, about becoming a full-time
blogger. On March 1, 2006, I officially started full-time as editor of
TreeHugger.com. By that point I was almost doing that job even if it
wasn't official, so the transition was fairly smooth for me.

What do you hope people take away from your blog?

I hope they will learn something. I want them to find out about
positive developments and solutions because there's enough doom &
gloom out there. I want people to discover new interests; If you come
to TreeHugger to read about eco-shoes, you might find information
about that sandwiched between posts about global warming and green
roofs, so there's definitely a potential for cross-pollination.

How ha your blog changed since it's inception?

I haven't been there from the start, but in 2004 TreeHugger started
mostly as a green design blog, and now we cover pretty much everything
green.

> How do you feel about tools like Technorati and Blogsplosion? Are there
tools that you wish were available that are not? Which tools do you use?

We do use these tools, but they are not essential to us. They are just
one of the many ways to get into the blogosphere. They are probably
more useful to newbies than to our writers who have been "plugged in"
for a longer time and already have their sources.

Has your blog led to other opportunities?

It defintely allowed me to connect with some great people (our
team is awesome!) and talk with dozens and dozens of interesting
people I probably wouldn't have met otherwise. The amount of email I'm
getting can be overwhelming, and I can't always reply to everybody as
quickly as I'd want to, but overall it's been a great experience.

How long does it take to write an entry?

Depends. Actually writing it can be pretty fast, but most of the time
the entry will "ferment" in my head for a while before I get down to
write it, so that when I do, I have a pretty good idea of what I want.

I'm not sure how it is for each of our writers.

What was your most memorable entry?

That would be hard to say. I've written hundreds and hundreds of them...

But I'm always happy when the entry has a long life and I see it's
still getting traffic months after being publish, or when it gets lots
of comments and it starts a conversation among readers.

Do you ever get hate mail?

Some trolls and some spambots, but very little real hate mail. We've
had over 30,000 reader comments on the site and countless reader
emails, and the vast majority of them are positive. I'm really happy
about that.

How often do you update?

Every day, all day.

What blogs do you read?

Tons, though sometimes I'm too busy to read as many as I would like.
My RSS reader has a bunch of green blogs, some "brain food" sites
(scientific stuff, productivity tips, Internet/blogging-related, etc)
and some news sites.

Where do you think blogging will be in 10 years?

Things are moving so fast, it's hard to say. 10 years is a long time.
It took 50 years for the phone to reach a critical mass, 15-20 years
for the Internet, 7 years for cell phones, 3-4 years for blogs, 1 year
for Youtube... Each new innovation is built on the foundations of the
previous ones. In the case of blogging, it's such a flexible platform
that it can use and integrate many other innovations (we're already
seeing lots of video blogs and audio podcasts)..

I suspect that at some point blogging will stop being a separate thing
and it'll just be the main way to publish content on the web. Amateur,
professionals, it doesn't matter, it's the quality of the content that
people care about, and that's inherently very democratizing.