The State of the Blog, Part 4

Odd Notes

During the Terry Schiavo fiasco and the past presidential election, everybody’s readership swelled. It’s a new feature of modern life that when there are these periods of national stress or upheaval, people turn to google for answers. Google is the new oracle of Delphi handing out obscure answers to the confused.

In the past year, I think that the blogosphere has gotten better about sorting itself out. The chicks have gotten stronger, mostly because they have found each other and link to each other more reliably. When I started out 2-1/2 years ago, I didn’t know where to find like-minded bloggers. I just did my thing until the Invisible Adjunct and the Crooked Timber people found me and said you belong here. Later, the feminists and the mommies brought me in, too. These groups are much better defined today.

One of the missions of the liberal bloggers has been to get more lefties into office. An article on the topic and a great linked filled post by Dan.

Speaking of civility in the blogosphere, read Jim Brady of the Washington Post and Echidne’s response.

Quickly skimming over my past few posts, I feel like I was too critical. Yes, blogs are clumsy tools for getting your thought out. It’s easy to make cheap shots and hard to convey complex ideas. There are some real cretins out there; I still haven’t recovered from the last time I looked at Little Green Footballs.

But there is a lot of great things going on, too. There are bloggers, like Russell Arben Fox, who don’t fit into any one neat ideological box. Some bloggers even write freaky long posts, which maybe don’t have a Kos-sized audience, but still are read by lots of people. There are places in the blogosphere where the grown-ups hang out, write good stuff, and talk about Angelina Jolie, the Office, and the Simpsons. I’m very happy to be a part of it.