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February 5, 2008
this blog is five
I wrote my first post on January 8, 2003 and have posted almost every weekday since then--the biggest gap being last month. This is post number 1,261. When I started, most of my friends didn't know what a blog was, and I remember a huge room of people at a national conference scratching their heads when someone (not I) used the word. Now everyone seems to have a blog, and even I realize that hip people have shifted to other formats.
I began with something like an online diary, recording what I was up to. Gradually, I settled into a habit of writing mini-essays and deliberately trying to rotate my posts among political commentary, news about civic renewal, applications of moral/political philosophy to current issues, and cultural criticism. I have often used this space as a notebook. Much of my most recent book, The Future of Democracy, appeared here, one paragraph at a time. I allow myself to be self-referential about once a year, near the blog's birthday, when I write about my own blogging.
I keep up with other explicitly civic blogs and I'm delighted to have their company. For the most part, the political blogs I read are now the ones that have been formally incorporated into magazines such as The Atlantic and The American Prospect. I don't know whether this short list reflects laziness on my part or an inevitable winnowing-out process that has made the blogosphere more professional.
February 5, 2008 9:32 AM | category: none