Dear readers: I have said what I came to say and I wish you all the best

I want to close out this year by officially closing out my work on this blog.

After four years of pouring my thoughts into this blog and enjoying much stimulating exchange with our readers and other bloggers on the German media/political landscape - I feel that the time has come for me to step aside and allow new voices to step in and carry the conversation forward. I truly feel that I have finally said most everything that I wanted to say when I started this journey back in September 2003. The amazing experiences I've had since will stay with me forever - and I want to thank all of the bloggers who inspired me (too many to name here - most notably Glenn Reynolds and Erik Svane and all my Mainz bloggers in Germany, Switzerland and beyond).

I want to give a very special thanks to David Kaspar for founding this blog and giving me the opportunity of a lifetime. My work on this blog has given me so much in so many ways and created a unique and thoroughly life-altering experience.

Let there be no mistake: The mission of this blog lives on because the problems that it addressed will - unfortunately - live on. I could continue to write about the problem - but I would - to a large extent - only be repeating myself. That is why newer, fresher thinkers must step forward and give us their take of the state of German media coverage of the United States. It is my deepest wish that our work continue to inspire new bloggers - particularly in Germany - to take up the journey which has - for me - now come to an end.

If nothing else - I am deeply thankful that this blog and this work provoked much thought among both consumers and producers of German media. It is of utmost importance that the conversation that began on this site continue into the future and I implore all those who have taken some bit of thought from this site to keep that discussion alive.

Finally - I want to thank the readers and commenters. You made this site possible and you share credit in all that it has become. You proved that the little guy can have a big voice and get big institutions to think twice about their actions. When I first started blogging - I thought I was alone in my frustrations with German media. Along the way - I met many others who initially felt just as alone as I did - and together we discovered just how many other people shared our dismay at German media coverage of the United States. That was perhaps the most humbling and powerful aspect of all of this. And that is ultimately the power of the blog and the power of the internet. May it continue to thrive.

Who knows - I may blog again one day. But for now - I want to wish you all a fond farewell and all the best for the New Year.

---Ray D.

PS: I will leave the work on this blog online to serve as a reference for all those who might continue to find it useful.

Comments

[icarus]

Alles gute & viel Glueck!

[Doug]

Thanks for four years of thoughtful and insightful effort, and an experience that I've found to be unique among blogs.

[LC Mamapajamas]

We will miss you, Ray.

Farewell, and God bless you. May the road rise to meet your feet. :)

[Pat Patterson]

Ray, without being able to refer back to the deleted comment mine seems deranged. But still a job well done and hope you can post soon and often.

---Note from Ray: Fixed that. Thanks for your kind words.

[Arnaud]

Ray, As soon as the world will be confronted to a defining moment such as 9/11 or the Iraq war, the world will again be separated into three categories: the Good (the US of A), the bad(s) (they are plenty of them), and the useless idiots (a.k.a. Continental Western Europe). When that happens, I am sure we will read from you. Until then, I wish you all the best and thank you for the past four years.

Arnaud

---Note from Ray: Thanks for your comment. I think there are all three categories pretty much everywhere you go. Look at the primary elections in the US right now - some of these "candidates" are pretty clueless. Further, there are some people - like David - who really "get it" in Europe. The beauty of the internet is that we can bring those people together. (That is also the bane of the internet - it allows the clueless to flock together as well.)

[WhatDoIKnow]

Ray, what can I say... Thanks for your work!

I enjoyed your work here, you did something that was so badly needed. All the best to you!

[Frederick]

"Further, there are some people - like David - who really "get it" in Europe. The beauty of the internet is that we can bring those people together. (That is also the bane of the internet - it allows the clueless to flock together as well.)"

The clueless already were flocking together. As your site has so effectively shown for Germany, great institutions generate, organize, and direct the flocking. If we are lucky, historians someday will examine with morbid fascination the suicidal cancer that western civilization developed in the 20th c. They will trace with amazement how in the late 20th c. it metasticized and took control of institutions left by prior generations to promote the civilization's survival. They also will see how the appearance of the internet provided a mechanism by which that cancer was in the end contained and forced into remission. Your site will provide for historians an example of an early attempt to use the internet to contain one aspect of the cancer's advance, institutional generation of anti-American propaganda in Germany. You did your work well. Congratulations. Best wishes for whatever comes next.

[Consul-At-Arms]

@Ray,

Sorry to see you take your leave, but I can see where you may feel you've reached the point of diminishing returns. Excellent work up to this point. I hope to see you return to the blogosphere someday "tanned, rested, and ready." Best wishes of success in all your future endeavors.

I've linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2007/12/davids-medienkritik-online-goes-offline.html

[Pamela]

Well. Damn.

Ray, you may have said all you have to say FOR NOW. But I suspect as you continue your travels, you will find there is yet more to say. Undoubtedly, you will say it with all the rigor and conviction you have brought to us here.

Just be sure when you do to stop by and give us a heads up. I wouldn't want to miss it for anything.

But I will always miss you here.

Note from Ray: I will miss you all too. You've been like a second family for a while now. I'm sure I will eventually want to blog again. I'm not sure when or how - but I'll let you all know when I do.

[Daniel B]

Thanks for keeping us updated on those wacky German media types! Its been entertaining and informative!

[Buckeye Abroad]

G-d bless Ray. Hope you have a happy and fruitfull life.

Alles Bestens!

[GringoTex]

Given the hours expended versus income gained by blogging, it is not difficult to understand why anyone would stop blogging. I have enjoyed reading Medienkritik for the last 2 years, and also enjoyed participating in the give-and-take among the readers who post comments. With the exception of some like our friend Phil, I have been impressed by the number of posters on this blog who will acknowledge a well-reasoned, well-documented viewpoint that does not appear to agree with their own. Lars, for example. Through such exchange of views, one can achieve a better understanding of others' points of view and achieve some meeting of the minds.

After all, the United States and Germany have much in common. The great German composers such as Bach are played and listened to all over the US. It has been reported that German is the most common ethnic background in the US. Not only am I of partial German descent, but my brother-in-law emigrated from Germany with his family at age 12. Midwestern home cooking is basically German cooking. Germans partake of American popular culture. We do have some common ground.

[svetov]

Hats off to Ray and David! You'll be sorely missed! Because, as optimistic as one can be, things will not get better in the German media. I don't want to rave on, but disappointment in the picture of America as depicted by the German news media can only be termed as fairly boundless. One solution is trying to blank out the media here by not reading what they write and broadcast -- and one has to pay the GEZ fees, to top it off, which support the two "public" television stations, which effuse some of the worst of this crassly not-well-meaning stuff. I don't know about others, but one still lives here and dreads conversing with the country's denizens about anything relating to America. The funny thing is you could have a conversation with anybody on the German street, to put it generally, and they would still bring up America and lecture you with ideas they derived from the German media's witchery and voodoo. Is there any cure? What Davids Medienkritik said about the period between 2002 and 2005 as being the time of the worst anti-Americanism ever since there has been a democratic German state is true; we don't count what the German media wrote and broadcast before 1945, do we. Did it really get less after 2005 ... Okay, Merkel is a relief. But the media? Those guys and gals are still around. For instance: one of the comments by one reader of Medienkritik was about how we're all waiting in vain for the first investigative reporting to appear in "critical German media" on what Schröder is doing for Gaszprom and Putin. At least that nightmare is more or less over, we think ... maybe. Hey, anyway, you guys collected and commented and did a service since 2003, which one can only call a form of "drecksarbeit," and I'd like to say: Thanks! Maybe you'll come back one day?

[Karin Quade]

Dear Ray,

it is so sad to hear you stop blogging. You have been such a source of inspiration and motivation for all German pro-American bloggers. I remember when I first discovered your blog. It was such a consolation to see I was not alone! Then to actually meet you and many of the other pro-Amerian bloggers at the demonstration in Mainz was definitely one of the greatest moments in my "blogging-life". I think Mainz has really been an encouragement for a lot of other pro-Americans to start their own blogs. And it was an incredible feeling to see the German pro-American blogosphere grow so fast. We seemed so strong and united.
The more saddening it was (at least for me) to see, that this momentum was partly lost after internal disputes within the German pro-American blogosphere. At least, that is the impression I had.
But your impact, Ray, will never be forgotten. Thank you for all the great work you have done and all the best for the future! I hope you will come back one day!

Karin

[Erik S]

Thank you for all, Ray. I won't forget either (among (many) other things) your June 2004 arrival in Paris either for our first anti-American demonstration crash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ook28A0PbSA
(That would be Ray coming up, fellas, in the final instants of the video to defend me from the mustachioed guy.)

PS: And don't forget, Ray (und dich auch nicht, David): how about taking the best material of those four years and bringing it all together into a book/buch (auf Englisch und/oder auf Deutsch)?

[John Rohan]

I will miss you!!! Your blog was wonderful. I live in Germany and sometimes report on the German media also, but I cannot take your place.

Anyone searching for another watchdog on the German media could check out Karin Quade's blog "anti-anti-Americanism" at http://anti-anti-americanism.com/blog/

[jane m]

Wow, I have learned so much about Europe here in the last 3 years, I can't begin to describe my gratitude for what you have been doing at this site. I just want to express how much I will miss the stimulating writing and commentary I've found here. It's been an amazing journey. Thank you for what you have done. I hope you will start another blog someday. I will be waiting eagerly.

Good luck and THANK YOU !!!!!