Details, Details
Josh Marshall has started up a new enterprise called TPM Cafe. Although he’s recruited a number of participants, it seems more than just another group blog. It might be easy to make the comparison to Arianna’s Big Bunch of Blogs, but I think Marshall’s looking for something more cohesive. At the very least, it’s already more manageable and more interactive than Arianna. TPM Cafe has only been going since Tuesday, so I’ll see how it develops before I add it to my links at the right. Marshall is continuing with Talking Points Memo in its original format, so that link's staying as it is.
One of Marshall’s new compatriots is Matthew Yglesias, who’s moved blog, stock, and barrel over to the new digs at TPM Cafe. I’ve adjusted the Yglesias link at the right to reflect that change.
While I was mucking around in the links area, I added Eric Alterman’s Altercation, which I've lately found myself checking more often than sites I’ve listed since I started this blog, and John Aravosis’s AMERICAblog. I heard Aravosis last week at John Conyers’s forum on media bias and was quite impressed. He led a lot of the coverage on the Jim Guckert/Jeff Gannon situation (apropos of nothing: do you think Jim Guckert really had a pet named Jeff?), and I’ve been seeing more and more references to his blog (which is a group blog to some extent, but Aravosis is the main contributor). While I was at it, I added John Conyers’s blog, too. He claims to be writing it himself (and except for the time commitment it would demand, I’ve got no reason to suggest he’s not), but if nothing else, it’s officially sanctioned and coming out of his office. I haven’t really looked into Congressional blogging at all, but who are the other congressmen or senators with active blogs? I know the Dean campaign ran a blog that has continued after the election, but are there any other candidate or officer-holder blogs that function as more than PR for their namesakes and offer real content?
posted by Doug @ 11:29 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I find TPMCafe a little difficult to manage, for different reasons than the HP, which you're right is too bulky to negotiate (and sometimes you have to click "read whole post" twice to get to actually read the whole post. An abbreviation maze.
For TPMCafe, I can't quite put my finger on it There are millions of topics/discussion tables. But I think the main beef I have is it's hard to look at. Is the type too big? The words too far apart? The column too narrow? I don't know, but it feels like I do alot of scrolling for few words, and then have to click a link to get somewhere else to actually finish the thought. It's a silly and vague thing to complain about, but I just don't like looking at the words there.
You're right, Don. I can't put my finger on it, either, but there's something about TPMCafe that's slightly off-putting. To use Yglesias as an example, I just don't go to his blog as readily as I did last week. My initial thought was that he'd shifted his focus somewhat, but when I look more closely, I don't think there's anything different in the content, just in the presentation.
I haven't looked around TPMCafe all that much yet, and maybe this points to why. I've brought the front page up a few times and looked at it, but it hasn't engaged me enough to click through to anything further more than once or twice. Maybe if I keep this in mind next time I go, I'll be more open to exploring.
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