Pointing from Print to Blog for a Change
The Boston Phoenix's Dan Kennedy asked political types in and around the Massachusett's governor's office what they thought of the "nasty, albeit well-researched" weblog Romney Is a Fraud. To paraphrase, the response he reports (in the Phoenix's This Just In section) was a resounding chorus of "duh?" Follow-up questions: Do the political types read the Phoenix -- and will the "Mitt Romney's secret tormentor" headline on page six make readers curious enough to type "romneyisafraud.blogspot.com" into their browsers? Cosmo Macero, a Boston Herald columnist who also uses Blogspot, has mentioned the anti-Romney site on his weblog, but not in his print column, Kennedy says. On a blog that starts with links to flattering comments, Macero's online comments include that "Ben," the author of the blog, was "kind enough to cite some of my stuff," but is certainly not kind to the governor.
Meanwhile, Kennedy's print column might get some new readers to look at Adam Gaffin's boston-online.com, which includes tons of local lore along with a blog-on-Boston-blogs.
Coincidentally, The Boston Globe is also giving weblogs some ink, with an op-edit column by Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing, advising readers to
"Browse Technorati's index of Top 100 interesting weblogs -- sites edited by individuals grinding personal axes -- and you'll turn up a dozen news stories that are being worn as smooth as river-stones by amateur analysis." Most of the story is about the more general issue of "turning information into action," including political and opinion sites and services, not just weblogs.
(Sidebar: Perhaps it's a limitation of semi-automated print-to-web conversion processes at both the Phoenix and boston.com/globe, but I wish they would put active links on the URL references in online versions of print stories like the Doctorow and Kennedy pieces mentioned above.)
3:33:33 PM 
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