Charity blogging event stumbles but lives on

NEW YORK - Last year was a watershed for blogging. Online news, opinion and diary sites proliferated, readership skyrocketed, and a Pew Research Center study found that one in 10 Internet users posted to a blog at least once. While the blogosphere grew, one of its quirkier and nobler community endeavors, now scheduled for Aug. 6, nearly died.

Blogathon started in July 2001, when blogger Cat Connor rounded up 101 participants to raise money for charity by updating their blogs round-the-clock for 24 hours. It was a geek reinterpretation of the run/walk/bike-for-a-cause fund-raiser, with emphasis on creative writing, augmented by caffeine. The group raised more than US$20,000 for an assortment of organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign and the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

Spreading news isn't hard in the blogging community; disseminating information with speed and frenzy is what blogs do best. Blogathon quickly grew, becoming an annual event. By July 2003, blogs attracted enough attention that the U.S. national media wrote about Blogathon. The event drew more than 400 participants, collectively raising $102,534. Organizers talked optimistically about a yearlong organizing effort and a technical infrastructure overhaul.

Then it all collapsed. Connor's life got complicated, and as Blogathon grew, its organizational challenges multiplied. She put it on hiatus for a year, but pledged a full-strength return in 2005.

Blogathon's contributors didn't want to let the event fade. Several organized a fill-in event, Project Blog. Even more held their own renegade Blogathons. "It was very communist," recalls veteran participant Catherynne M. Valente. "Everybody just sort of did it, and because the last weekend of July was traditional, that's when we did it."

Still, many eagerly awaited the return of the official Blogathon. In addition to the sense of united community the formal event offered, the Blogathon Web site's infrastructure made it easier for bloggers to collect pledges and tally their collective total. Valente, who raised $1,000 during her first Blogathon in 2003 and even more during her informal all-night charity blogging the next year, started waiting early this year for an announcement of Blogathon's return. And waiting, and waiting.

By early July, Blogathon's Web site, Blogathon.org, was still dormant. Then Project Blog abruptly packed it in as well. With only weeks to go before its usual date, it appeared no one was organizing Blogathon. But at the last minute, Smith College student Sheana Director, who participated in the first Blogathon and later assisted with its management, arranged with Connor to take over the Web site and scramble together this year's event, which will begin at 9 a.m. ET.

Director says "every aspect" of the resurrection has been challenging. Since 2003, the entire back-end infrastructure has been lost. The e-mail group that kept participants informed about plans died. Participants were given barely two weeks to do fund raising.

"A comedy of errors" is how returning blogger Shari Lipkin describes the affair. Still, she plans to participate this year. "Chaotic and frustrating as this is, and physically arduous as it can be, it's worth it," she said. "Many of us can't do as much as we want for charity. One thing I can do is write."