Eugene Volokh draws attention to an article by Cathy Seipp that finds fault with an L.A. Times article called "Blogging L.A." (Actually, the title I see at the link is "The new faces of the city.") The article highlights tiny blogs that detail life lived at the personal level in L.A.:
Seipp complains that the article mentions "neither the much-hyped L.A.-based commercial blogging enterprises that began this year (the Huffington Post and Pajamas Media, of which I'm a member), nor any of the major L.A. blogs (Kausfiles, the Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, et al) except L.A. Observed and Defamer, and then only in passing." Seipp portrays the article as clueless and lazy. What? Because it didn't write about the big blogs that anyone can easily see? Because tiny blogs are so five years ago?
It seems to me that it's much harder to find tiny blogs to recommend. And the most beautiful thing about the blogosphere has always been the continual budding of new blogs, written by persons with a new way to look at things. Those of us with a little or a lot more traffic should rejoice when a major newspaper finds a way to talk about them. The notion that the biggest blogs must be acknowledged first -- where does that come from? It makes no sense to me.
This is the daily face Los Angeles bloggers present to the world, and it is decidedly different from the image forged by decades of television, movie, newspaper, magazine and literary portrayals of the SoCal lifestyle. In this new etherworld, Hollywood, flowering bougainvillea and beaches are augmented by internal landscapes, closely observed neighborhoods, musings on politics or relationships and behind-the-scenes looks at myriad elements of local life.The article ends with a list of what the paper considers "the jewels among Los Angeles' thousands of blogs," and lawprof Stephen Bainbridge gets a nod in the political category, which is, following the theme of the article, kept very small.
Seipp complains that the article mentions "neither the much-hyped L.A.-based commercial blogging enterprises that began this year (the Huffington Post and Pajamas Media, of which I'm a member), nor any of the major L.A. blogs (Kausfiles, the Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, et al) except L.A. Observed and Defamer, and then only in passing." Seipp portrays the article as clueless and lazy. What? Because it didn't write about the big blogs that anyone can easily see? Because tiny blogs are so five years ago?
It seems to me that it's much harder to find tiny blogs to recommend. And the most beautiful thing about the blogosphere has always been the continual budding of new blogs, written by persons with a new way to look at things. Those of us with a little or a lot more traffic should rejoice when a major newspaper finds a way to talk about them. The notion that the biggest blogs must be acknowledged first -- where does that come from? It makes no sense to me.