How to find the best of what’s being discussed in the campaign blogs

Internet | Access/Network

I still haven’t found any blogs on politics that are must-read on a daily basis. I thought that the Columbia Journalism Review’s CampaignDesk would be one, but then I read Managing Editor Steve Lovelady remark to Jack Shafer in a recent Slate dialoge: “To date, the version that I have been to skeptical readers who ask me how Campaigndesk.org is ‘different from any number of blogs?’ is this: ‘Read my lips: IT’S EDITED!'”

CampaignDesk is thus readable, and very good. In fact, today they announced that their first “Blog Report”. They’ll read the blogs, so we don’t have to comb through them ourselves.

Of course, I can’t pass up the opportunity to reference again one of the prehistoric nay-sayers against this type of writing. Here’s Salon editor Gary Kamiya, in a dismissive review of Slate’s debut in 1996″

“Slate’s brain trust may have gone the meta-commentary, game-oriented, inside-baseball route in the front of the book because they decided that the Internet is essentially a quick-hit, gossipy, information-driven medium. Whatever their reasoning, however, it was a mistake. This approach capitulates to some of the worst contemporary cultural trends, rather than resisting them.”