Surprise Reader

Al Jazeera International recently contacted me. How's that for a first line? When I wrote about Saddam Hussein's execution, I received the following e-mail:

"I am a reporter at Al Jazeera International in Washington and I am working on a piece today about Saddam’s trial and the way it has been covered by the U.S. media and bloggers here. Would you be available to talk to me in a short interview? I would ask about your blog and the way you’re using it to express your personal views of the coverage and why you were compelled to write about it on your blog."

I replied to the e-mail saying that I may be interested but I wanted to know how much information about myself was needed. I like the fact that I'm somewhat anonymous. So what happened? It turns out that my e-mail went to the Al Jazeera reporter's spam folder and was not read until after the piece was finished.

In the two years I have written this, I have never been contacted by any reporter let alone one from Al Jazeera. Why would anyone, let alone Al Jazeera, want to contact me? Seriously, look at what I wrote about the past few days. Ryan Seacrest, Christina Aguilera and a contest to vote for my friends' dog.

The Al Jazeera reporter may be the second most famous person ever to acknowledge reading this site after Kevin Pittsnogle's mother.