FRIDAY BLOGGING

My blogging has been slow this week as my home computer is in the shop and I am having mondo hassles with Fed Ex trying to get it delivered back to me. (Apparently guaranteed over night delivery by 10:30 am should not be taken at face value). I've been using the down time to comb through two days of testimony before the 9/11 commission and to sort through all the statements by and counter-statements against insta-celebrity Dick Clarke.


Would the real Dick Clarke please stand up...

In the mean time, I've been perusing the sites of a number of my fellow blogonauts. Specifically, I've been checking out Blogstreet's rankings of top blogs in an attempt to learn just what it takes to publish a popular blog (could I say blog more times in one sentence?). Some of them I find excellent. Others, I find myself asking, "Huh?"

I can't seem to discern any hard and fast rules for what makes a blog succeed, so I decided to make up my own, universal rule for good blogging. Bind it as a sign upon your doorpost. Speak of it when you lie down and when you rise up.

Blogs must add value to the public discourse. Add new information that isn't already out there, or flies under the radar of the mainstream outlets. Provide insightful analysis that obliterates the conventional wisdom. Entertain the world with your creativity. And so on.

Any schmoe can post a hyperlink to the latest Paul Krugman column. Any schmoe can reproduce content that they lift from other sites. Some people even have the gall to beg readers for money for such a shallow service (and somehow they manage to be ranked no. 1/2?!?).