I remember sitting in the media room at the Libby trial with a pretty well known journalist who was trying to wrap his head around the whole "blog" thing. There were too many, he didn’t understand what was going on, all the codes and relationships and back-and-forths and how things worked their way through the blogospheric system.
"Just check Atrios every morning," I told him. "He tells us all what we’re going to talk about that day, and then we do it." A short while later, I ran into him again. "Now I understand," he said.
Eschaton is the hub, the place where everyone goes to quickly check in and see if they’ve missed anything. He reads prodigiously, seems to know what’s going on in the most remote corners of the blogosphere and has both an eye for a story and the ability to boil it down with a pithy minimalism that gets straight to the heart. The low-fi, spartan graphics often throw people who think, with its blogspot 1.0 atavism, that the site simply hasn’t been updated in a couple of years. But Duncan makes it work for him. After a while it’s kinda zen.
Anyway, Atrios is having a fundraiser today, so if you’ve got some spare change jingling around in your pocket, it’s a good place to think about depositing it.
(And while you’re at it, you can also sign up for EschaCon, which will be from March 28-30 in Philadelphia. I’m definitely going to be there.)
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zed
JANE!
Good morning Jane!
Hi Jane!
Check your inbox…
Morning Jane!
EG – that was meant sarcastically, you know. I figured everyone would recognize the quote.
I enjoy when Atrios makes fun of people who tell him what he should do with his own blog. It’s nice to have a blog that hasn’t changed. It’s charming.
Go Atrios!
Yea, Jane!!!
Yea, Duncan!!!
Duncan has my vote.
I loved Atrios’ first post, on day one:
“Is this thing on?”
(((((((Jane!)))))))
Firedoglake turns stories into Citizen Action!
Jane-
There’s a message at gmail for you from cnalb.
Zen Blogism?
Hail, Muse Jane!
Gotta run, but anyone know who’s liveblogging the Senate FISA floor action today?
Yes, Duncan has a way of cutting through the crap. Zen is a good word to describe what he does.
I’m really disappointed I won’t be able to go to the Eschacon—it’s the same weekend as a churchy thing I have to go to in Bethesda. Darn.
Actually I’m kind of surprised that the journo was able to understand Duncan so quickly. It took me a while to be able to simultaneously translate his shorthand in my head.
Very interesting link that Susie has posted.
Thanks for the heads-up, Jane…will head on over to The Hub.
Editor and Publisher this morning is headlining a story about Book Salon guest David Cay Johnston’s response to a dissing review of his Free Lunch. Why are we not surprised….
~ Prairie, who is still trying to figure out how to add widgets to her blogspot site
“He tells us all what we’re going to talk about that day, and then we do it.”
Does that mean we’ll be talking about jibs, spars, and “funky-assed boats” today?
The low-fi, spartan graphics often throw people who think, with its blogspot 1.0 atavism, that the site simply hasn’t been updated in a couple of years.
Gives his blog a dignified quality. Strong branding to it, as well, although I doubt the guy even thinks in that direction.
Or sports. . .eeeewwwww.
I appreciate Eschaton for its lack of the kind of testosterone poisoning that seems to be going on at Kos lately.
+1.
Yup. Been doing that since the fall of 2002.
Atrios is our Drudge, except he doesn’t lie.
Daily Kos is currently in my “Out of Favor” folder on my favorites list. I rarely visit it anymore.
Eschaton by contrast knows how to keeps its eye on the ball. That blog I visit every day and will make a contribution.
lol @ shorter kos
Jane’s upstairs…
Ditto. The Big Orange Satan has gotten too big. I check it every day but no longer read the comments. I loved it in the beginning for Kos’s political analyses. Much scarcer nowadays. I think there are a lot of kids posting, which accounts for the vitriol. Takes time to learn how to contain it.
DailyKos is much better if you just read the RSS feed. That way you get the front-pagers and avoid all the candidate diaries. You do get links to the “rescued diaries”, which give you pointers to all the stories that are getting ignored.
I’ll be there(it helps living in the Philly area)!! I can’t wait to meet Jane.
He’s a master of the succinct. And I am definitely gonna be at Eschacon.
Yeah. I’ve read Atrios every day that I’ve had internet access for the past 6 years. He’s the only site (besides GMail) that’s managed to stay in my ‘open this every time I open Firefox’ folder of bookmarks without being dropped for even a short time.
DKos, TPM, Political Wire, all are great. Atrios, however, remains the king. He is the best at messaging: distilling concepts to politically palatable– and intellectually understandable and coherent– phrases.
Yeah, he’s the hub, he’s the master of the succint, and this blog is a daily must-read.
What I want to know is how long he’s planning on being “35 years old”.