It’s time to blog about bloggers blogging about blogging! Let’s start with <a href=”http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909u/professional-bloggers”>Benjamin Carlson’s recent account</a> of “the rise of the professional blogger”:
<blockquote>In early July, Laura McKenna, a widely respected and longtime blogger, <a href=”http://www.apt11d.com/2009/07/the-blogosphere-20.html”>argued on her site, 11D</a>, that blogging has perceptibly changed over the six years she’s been at it. Many of blogging’s heavy hitters, she observed, have ended up “absorbed into some other professional enterprise.” Meanwhile, newer or lesser-known bloggers aren’t getting the kind of links and attention they used to, which means that “good stuff” is no longer “bubbling to the top.” Her post prompted a couple of the medium’s most legendary, best-established hands to react: Matthew Yglesias (formerly of <i>The Atlantic</i>, now of ThinkProgress), confirmed that blogging has indeed become “institutionalized,” and Ezra Klein (formerly of <i>The American Prospect</i>, now of <i>The Washington Post</i>) concurred, “The place has professionalized.” </blockquote>
This confirms what I’ve been hearing from people like <a href=”http://maudnewton.com/blog/index.php”>Maud Newton</a> (whom I met last spring) and <a href=”http://fauxrealtho.com/”>Lauren Bruce</a> (whom I met last week while sightseeing in West Lafayette, Indiana). Because of course, when I meet bloggers in real life, we take the opportunity to talk about blogging. (Well, actually Maud and I were <i>supposed</i> to do that — it was a forum at Penn State on blogging and the arts.) Note, by the bye, that all three of these bloggers are (1) widely respected, (2) longtime bloggers (Lauren, of course, invented blogging in 1985), and (3) women. So of course we have to ask them: where were all the women bloggers?