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A List of Worthwhile Blogs Occasioned by the Reported Demise of Blogging

There’s been a lot of chatter about The Death of Blogs the last few days, among media both mainstream and conservative, prompted in part by the New York Times‘ decision to shutter a few of its own. Marc Tracy, writing at the New Republic, bemoans the replacement of thoughtful blogging by an “endless stream of isolated dollops […]

There’s been a lot of chatter about The Death of Blogs the last few days, among media both mainstream and conservative, prompted in part by the New York Times‘ decision to shutter a few of its own. Marc Tracy, writing at the New Republic, bemoans the replacement of thoughtful blogging by an “endless stream of isolated dollops of news”:

Smaller brands within brands, be they rubrics like “Media Decoder” or personalities like “Ben Smith,” make increasingly little sense in a landscape where writers can cultivate their own, highly discriminating followings via social media like Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter, while readers can curate their own, highly discriminating feeds. In this world, there is no place for the blog, because to do anything other than put “All Media News In One Place” is incredibly inefficient.

Andrew Sullivan and Ann Althouse are skeptical. The cover story in the Columbia Journalism Review touches on similar themes, but with conclusions that it seems to me bloggers should be somewhat heartened by, especially the idea that “many young consumers prefer to have their news filtered by an individual or a publication with a personality rather than by a traffic-seeking robot or algorithm.”

Truth be told, I don’t have much time for the conservative blogosphere for the simple reason that there isn’t much personality. So much of it is just repetitive outrage about Obama appointees or Brett Kimberlin’s criminal record that it’s not really a useful way to keep yourself informed. I usually stick to Ace of Spades, Outside the Beltway, RedState, and the Gateway Pundit for up to date right-of-center news. The conservative blogosphere’s alleged decline strikes me as a mixed blessing at worst, if it’s even true, since the best blogs, the above included, will keep their readers and even gain more as the lower-quality ones drop off. Regardless, there are underappreciated gems and they deserve to be encouraged, so in the interest of doing so, here are a few that have kept me coming back. They range widely in ideological orientation, posting frequency, popularity, and in pretty much every other way, but I’ve tried to stick to ones you might not have heard of:

Against Crony Capitalism — What it sounds like
Booker Rising — A blogospheric home for black moderates and conservatives
A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days (Pejman Yousefzadeh) — Foreign policy and politics
Garvey’s Ghost — A Garveyite’s perspective on politics
Gucci Little Piggy — Social science commentary
The Hipster Conservative — Religion, politics, and philosophy for conservative hipsters
Iowahawk (David Burge) — Some of the best political humor on the web
Jesus Radicals — Theology from the radical left
L’Hote (Freddie DeBoer) — Left-wing contrarianism
Naked DC — Insider-y political commentary
Notes on Liberty — A solid libertarian group blog
Pinstripe Pulpit (Alan Cornett) — Religious and sartorial matters from a former assistant of the late Russell Kirk
Prez16 (Christian Heinze) — Clever, digestible political commentary
The Rancid Honeytrap — Commentary from the left
Ribbon Farm (Venkatesh Rao) — Economics and social commentary
Rorate Caeli — Traditional Catholicism
Slouching Towards Columbia (Dan Trombly) — Liberal realist foreign policy
The Trad — Culture and style for trads
Turnabout — Jim Kalb’s commentary
United Liberty — Another solid libertarian group blog, frequently updated, and great for breaking news

In the future, I’ll try to do a better job engaging with some of these folks. And if you have more to recommend, leave ’em in the comments.

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