Dead Tree Edition Tops Twitter and the World Cup

RISI, "the leading information provider for the global forest products industry," shocked me and a lot of sane people as well this week by naming me to its "Power List" of the industry's top 50 movers and shakers.

"Written by the self-styled D. Eadward Tree, the Dead Tree Edition blog is not afraid to dig into the issues that the pulp, paper and publishing industry would rather lay buried under dead leaves," says the article explaining my selection as #43. It says this blog "has become a must-read for anybody involved in the pulp, paper and publishing industries, especially those who like a bit of spice with their breakfast reading."

OK, so #43 is pretty far down the list, but at least it's ahead of Domtar CEO John Williams (#48), FIFA World Cup (#49), and "Social Media: Twitter and LinkedIn" (#50).

My selection to this prestigious list has led to some questions that I will now try to answer:

• Q: How much did you have to pay RISI's editors to get on the list? A: Nothing, I swear.
• Q (from my roommate/partner): So does this mean you will get paid actual money instead of just link-bait when Web sites re-publish your articles? A: Hope springs eternal.
• Q: Now that you've given Twitter a good thrashing, will Dead Tree Edition do an IPO? A: Yeah, right. Wanna buy some shares?
• Q: Will Dead Tree Edition start showing up in Google News? And will search engines start giving higher rankings to articles on Dead Tree Edition than to excerpts and quotations of those articles on other Web sites? A: You obviously don't understand how the search-engine gods rule the www.world. They judge an article on Dead Tree Edition to be the unreliable work of an obscure, anonymous blogger. But when those same words appear in a newspaper or an industry Web site, they suddenly become imbued with authority.
• Q: Is it true you almost wrote an article about how certain famous white people could help save forests? A: Yes. I read that the U.S. Department of Agriculture was releasing parasitic WASPs into the Chicago area to stop the spread of emerald ash borers that were killing trees. Finally, I thought, here's a real job for Prince Charles to do while waiting for Mum to, you know. And this could even give Paris Hilton a chance to do something useful. Then I realized that the article was talking about parasitic insects, not parasitic White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Oh well. I still wonder what happens to the wasps after they eat all the ash borers. Maybe they buy mini-vans and join the local country club.
• Q: If you're so influential, why do members of Congress and most news media still insist that Obamacare was paid for partly by closing a $23 billion loophole for black liquor -- a loophole that you repeatedly said never existed? A: Alleged influence in the forest products industry doesn't carry much weight on Capitol Hill or with the news media. 
• Q: How did you end up ranked ahead of Williams, whose company probably had much to do with preventing the early demise of the U.S. black liquor tax credit (despite your attacks on the program) and then became the #1 recipient of Canada's version of the credit? A: Good question. I guess Domtar employs more voters in Maine and Canada than I do.
  

Other, barely relevant articles about D. Eadward Tree and Dead Tree Edition include:

• D. Eadward Tree Unmasked! A top U.S. Postal Service executive was revealed to be the man behind Dead Tree Edition.
• Dead Tree Makes the AP!
• Can You Trust an Anonymous Blog with an Aggravating Name? Not everyone thinks Dead Tree Edition should be taken seriously.
• Dead Tree Edition's Best of 2009, which will help you understand why I'm especially happy to be ranked ahead of Twitter (as will Twitter vs. RSS: So Much for Superior Technology).