Because some of the best left leaning blogs on the net are from Indiana this article sparked my attention.

Indiana in the Blogosphere

More local Web logs tackle more serious issues

By Tracy Warner

www.tracywarner.net

More sites, more info

Though Indiana has something of a reputation as a technological backwater – some of it deserved, some of it not – the proliferation of Web logs has not bypassed the Hoosier state. Today, residents in Fort Wayne and across Indiana can find locally based Web logs  – “blogs” for short – devoted to local news and media, special interests, issues, personal diaries and others that, well, I’m not really sure what they’re about.

Blogs have been around for more than a decade, but I had long associated them with online personal diaries. Their authors – bloggers – share their daily lives and musings with the world.

After reading a couple of those self-obsessed diaries once, I asked myself, is anyone interesting enough to make it worth my while to read what they cooked for dinner every day? After reading some a second or third time, I found the answer. No.

Though blogs devoted to more serious matters have been around practically as long as the personal blogs, interest in the blogosphere really picked up during last year’s presidential election, especially after Dan Rather’s faulty reporting on President Bush’s National Guard service was first uncovered, not by mainstream media, but by bloggers.

Now, Hoosiers interested in seriously following news from throughout Indiana – interlaced with commentary – can turn to a number of blogs.

What’s a blog?

In some ways, whatever the blogger says it is. Neither the government nor a trade industry regulates it.

Blogs are Web pages. Good ones are updated frequently – daily or many times a day. Most blogs allow readers to post comments instantly and allow conversations between the bloggers and their readers. Most have hot links to Web sites that have garnered the blogger’s interest. Most also have a blog roll – a list of other blogs the blogger likes.

Blog postings are often short, usually to the point and often with a critical or even spiteful edge. Each usually has a headline. This commentary will probably provoke criticism on some of the blogs mentioned – or not mentioned.

Some are of general interest. Some are regionally specific, like the one I’ve been doing this year. Some deal with special interests or hobbies. Some may arise for a specific event, then end when it’s over.

A Google search for “What is a blog?” will turn up more than a half-million hits. Perhaps the most appropriate place to look is the Wikipedia – the online, free encyclopedia authored by Internet users. See: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/blog.

Like much of the Web, blogs are self-policing – people go to the ones that are most interesting and avoid the ones that aren’t. With the anonymity the Web offers, Web surfers don’t mind leaving comments describing their opinions of the blog in no uncertain terms.

Focus on the Fort

I’m not the only person to start a Fort Wayne- or Indiana-centered blog this year.

•One of the newest is Indiana Parley by Mitch Harper, a former Republican state representative. An example of info unique to his blog: A Fort Wayne native is helping in the is-it-or-is-it-not serious Texas gubernatorial campaign of Kinky Friedman, a singer with a wry wit.

•Fort Wayne Observed started out this year as a media commentary but has broadened to include politics, government and other things Fort Wayne. Nathan Gotsch, a filmmaker, has spent no small amount of pixels on his blog criticizing my blog. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

•Justin A. Cohn, The Journal Gazette sportswriter who covers the Komets, just started a Komets blog. It’s a lot more popular than mine, in case you were wondering.

•The editorial page editor of another newspaper in the city has also started a blog, also occasionally critical of The Journal Gazette. I started mine in January, he started his in July. Imitation …

•Chris Carter’s Dangerous Logic is about … well, I’m not sure what it’s about, but Carter does seem to care a lot about University of Michigan football, and one of its highlights is “white trash Wednesday.” And it’s been around a long time in blog years – since 2001.

Carter said he’s had a personal Web page in one form or another since 1996. Carter, in a low-tech phone interview, said his blog consists of “just stuff I see on the Web, in the media and in real life that strikes me as interesting or funny.”

More Hoosier blogs

•The Super’s Blog has tongues in the state’s education community wagging. It is purportedly by an Indiana public school superintendent with observations sharp enough to explain why he/she doesn’t offer readers a name.

•Amy Welborn of Fort Wayne has the blog, Open Book, which focuses on the Catholic Church. Welborn wrote a commentary headlined, “The Sins of the Seminaries,” in the New York Times on Sept. 25 (as Fort Wayne Observed noted).

•Indianapolis attorney Marcia Oddi has Indiana Law Blog, which focuses not only on legal issues but government-related issues. Oddi often displays long excerpts from stories in newspapers throughout the state.

Earlier this year, Oddi ceased daily blogging because of career demands, prompting such an outcry from her many readers that she resumed it.

•Other bloggers who have the best of Indiana newspapers include Masson’s Log by Doug Masson of Monticello – who is becoming the authority on the time zone maze – and Kemp’s log, an environmentally heavy log by lawyer E. Thomas Kemp of Richmond.

•Indianapolis TV reporter Jim Shella – the dean of Statehouse reporters – has a blog through WISH-TV that is short on daily posts but still insightful. (But it doesn’t accept comments.)

•One of the state’s more popular sites has nothing to do with government – and not really much, these days, about words. Girlinblack’s most recent posts are simply series of photographs.

Blog blogs

•For surfers not interested in checking out every Hoosier blog every day, the new TRIB: A Review of Hoosier Blogs launched last week with the aim of doing it for you.

Early in the week, it presented highlights from a number of Indiana blogs – then fell silent, but returned Friday. If it keeps going, it could be a good place to start.

•The more-established blogindiana.com has a rather exhaustive list of Indiana-based blogs.

Blah blah

Are blogs worth the time? Like much else on the Internet, there’s a lot of junk, and it can take a lot of clicks to get to someplace worthwhile.

And information on a blog, like that of countless Web sites, is only as good as the blogger, who may have researched an issue or may have made it all up.

But good or bad, if you’re one of the countless white-collar employees who do most of their Web surfing at the office, reading blogs usually beats work.
Blog links

For links to blogs mentioned in this commentary, go to:

www.tracywarner.net
http://blogs.fortwayne.com/tracy_warner/