website statistics

Archive for the 'Relaunches' Category

♥-ing Huckabee, Now More Than Ever

Way back in August 2007, I wrote about a blog called Mike Huckabee President 2008. As one might expect, the purpose of this particular was to support Huckabee’s presidential campaign. Nothing too spectacular about that, except that Mike Huckabee President 2008, launched February 15, 2005, was almost certainly the first unofficial blog supporting any 2008 candidate. In fact, it predated the official launch of Huckabee’s campaign by nearly two years.

We are now even earlier in the present presidential election cycle than we were then, yet we can already note the existence of Mike Huckabee President 2012 (to which, you may have already noticed, the old site redirects).

Mike Huckabee President 2012 blog

The blog is run by the same pseudonymous “Blue State Republican” responsible for the previous campaign. In a recent e-mail, BSR notes:

we start out not only with Huckabee’s name being included in early polling, but as the front runner. It should be an interesting three years.

Huckabee faced an uphill battle in 2008 mostly because he lacked name recognition. That is not his problem this time, since his surprisingly strong performance has earned him a weekend slot on Fox News and what seems to be a standing invitation to appear on The Daily Show. The bigger issue now may be his record in commuting sentences of Arkansas criminals who went on to re-offend.

Interestingly, Mike Huckabee President 2012 does not appear to be the first blog supporting Huckabee’s presumed campaign this cycle. In March 2008, once Huckabee had withdrawn, the very similarly named Mike Huckabee for President 2012 opened for business and posted 15 updates before going dark in December 2008.

P.S. The above screen shot contains a small (very small) Easter egg of sorts. Guess correctly in the comments and buy yourself a cookie!

RNC08 #1: Don’t Call it a Comeback

C-SPAN 2.0 Featuring New Media Strategies

If you are a frequent reader of Blog P.I., you (and thanks to the MyBlogLog widget in the sidebar, I know who some of you are) may have spent a few seconds out of the past week wondering just where I’ve been. Of course, as my last post two weeks ago made clear, I was about to spend the coming fortnight-and-a-half working on C-SPAN.org’s Convention Hubs: first DNC08 and now increasingly RNC08.

For 168+ hours now I’ve been working literally around the clock — to be more accurate, one revolution of the hour hand each solar day — finding and spotlighting blog posts from national and state-level media and political blogs, and running a Blogads campaign involving changes to the artwork and copy reflecting each evening’s developments (I like how it’s rendered on BuzzMachine best). I’ve also done C-SPAN TV twice, sitting on the back of my sport coat, focusing just beyond the camera lens, depending on the bug in my ear for cues, reporting on the latest buzz from the left- and rightosphere from the offices of New Media Strategies.

This week my role shifts, and in a dwindling few hours I’ll be flying to St. Paul, Minnesota for the Republican National Convention. As the NMS Blue Team returns from Denver, the Red Team will be shipping out to the metropolitan area where the Coens’ Fargo mostly took place. I travel both in my capacity as a representative of C-SPAN at the convention as well as an official, RNC-credentialed blogger, so I will do my best to share the experience with you.

This will be a new thing for Blog P.I., but a second time for me as a blogger at a GOP convo; in 2004 I was part of Hotline’s convention team in New York City, and I blogged the convention in my off-hours. Then, I took some pictures with my crummy first-ever Sprint camera phone, most of which were uploaded to a server I long since forgot to pay for. This time I’ll be blogging it here in this space, using my iPhone camera and WordPress app, available free of charge from iTunes (which by the way now is really crying out for rebranding).

For the next five days or so, I expect to be taking photos and posting them with minimal presentation, reserving most of my reporting and commentary for a widget from my Twitter account, which will appear here shortly. This is basically the opposite of what Blog P.I. has been in its two years-plus existence: whereas my blogging has primarily comprised several times-weekly essay posts (such as this one) I will instead switch to frequent, quick-hit posts that will take you inside the moment (I’m pretty sure I can do this).

If you’re going to be in the Twin Cities this week, gimme a shout (see the contact page). If you know me from e-mail or the Blogometer or Blog P.I. and want to say hello, drop me a line. If you know of a party, breakfast or similar event that’s either open-invitation or you can extend one, consider me interested. Need a mug, thumb drive or baseball cap emblazoned with the C-SPAN logo? We can probably work something out.

And but so, I’ll get back to packing a week’s worth of my least-unprofessional attire and making sure I don’t leave anything behind, with the DVR playing the Oregon Ducks’ 44-10 victory over the (Huck the) Fuskies as I close up shop here and make my way to the Lesser White North.

More coming soon.

O Captain! My Captain! Rise Up and Read the Blogs

On Saturday, John Fund wrote a story in which he inadvertently referred to a certain well-known political blogger as:

…Ed Morrissey of the conservative blog Captain’s Quarters…

This prompted Morrissey to joke:

I’ll have to get John to update his Rolodex.

On Saturday, a Los Angeles Times op-ed by George Washington University proefessors John Sides and Eric Lawrence began:

Daily Kos. Little Green Footballs. Talking Points Memo. Instapundit. Firedoglake. Captain’s Quarters. These are among the thousands of political blogs that are increasingly a factor in U.S. politics.

If you see where I’m going with this, you are probably someone who is a constant reader of conservative blogs. If you don’t, then you probably are not.

Here’s where I’m going: Twice in two days somebody with access to the mainstream media, from just outside but interested in and conversant with the blogosphere, has failed to recognize that Morrissey shuttered his Captain’s Quarters blog almost five months ago, and has been writing for Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air ever since.

It’s almost the inverse what I’ve said about how MyDD didn’t miss a beat when its top two writers decamped for a new website: as long as it continues to fulfill its mission, many casual readers will barely notice, and will be unlikely to remove it from their bookmarks. In this case it seems that casual observers of the blogosphere are so familiar with Captain’s Quarters that they assume it must be going strong, and it will be ever thus.

In a sense, the blog appears to be influential even when unread. More accurately, Captain’s Quarters simply has strong brand equity. Morrissey’s considered, even verbose explications of the latest political developments from a realistic (though not a “realist”) conservative viewpoint maintains a presence in the mind of even very occasional readers, even if the blog itself is no longer maintained, or present.

That’s not to say his impact has diminished: in fact it may be greater than ever. And so this presents a good opportunity to run another site traffic comparison, counting unique visitors, via Compete:

Captain’s Quarters vs. Hot Air on Compete.com

When Morrissey pulled up stakes, he took his entire readership with him. They didn’t have much of a choice, as typing in the old captainsquartersblog.com URL will swiftly deposit you at hotair.com without displaying so much as a redirect page first. In fact, initially it seems Hot Air grew by an even greater number of visitors than were lost at CQ, even counting the growth in traffic Morrissey experienced in his last month blogging solo. This rapid growth has leveled off and even dipped slightly, but it’s clear now that Hot Air is twice as big as it was before. The move appears to have paid off exactly as they hoped.

I confess that back in February I was personally skeptical of Morrissey’s decision, based primarily on the fact that he was giving up such a strong brand to go join a stable of bloggers under someone else’s shingle. I’m glad now that I didn’t write about it then. But even if Hot Air had received only a modest bump in traffic, the joining of forces would probably have still been a good idea, at least for Morrissey.

Now, if the worst that can be said is that some small number of readers are still thumbing through his archives, perhaps under the impression that he is still updating posts as “Captain Ed,” then that’s fine. It even helps us spot the ones who aren’t really paying attention.

Let The Eagle Soar: Behind The RedState Acquisition

Even as many bloggers have moved into the professional media world, fewer independent blogs have been picked up wholesale by a larger media group. Andrew Sullivan moved his blog over to Time in early 2006, and years earlier, Mickey Kaus moved his Kausfiles over to Slate. But both are solo bloggers who had a pre-existing relationship with those publications.

Rarer still is for a group blog to be bought out — but this past month, that’s just what’s happened at RedState. If anything, that deal less resembles those mentioned above than the Washington Post’s acquisition of Slate from Microsoft two years ago.

Eagle & RedState LogosIn mid-December, the conservative community group site announced it had agreed to be purchased by Eagle Publishing, the parent company of Human Events, Regnery Publishing, Evans-Novak Political Report, the Conservative Book Club, among other movement conservative publishing enterprises.

RedState already had undergone several changes since its launch in 2004 as a 527, including a switch from RedState.org to RedState.com in 2005 to create a for-profit entity that could accept advertising. This was followed by a major redesign and relaunch in the middle of last year, whereupon founding director Erick Erickson was hired/stepped up to run the site full-time. Most of the ad revenue went to him, which was just enough to get by on. But it brought RedState to another crossroads: Paying Erickson stretched the site’s resources too thin to develop and expand the site further.

About a year ago the site’s directors — Erickson plus Clayton Wagar, Mike Krempasky and Ben Domenech — started looking ahead once again, this time with an eye toward a merger. They entertained offers from a few different entities — whose names, alas, I was not told — but questions lingered about whether those groups and individuals understood the site.

The first talks with Eagle, in late spring or early summer of 2006, started out no more serious than those with suitors who had come and gone. But that soon changed. Chiefly, Eagle promised to:

  • Respect the brand and not change it fundamentally
  • Invest in the property long-term, with an eye toward financial viability
  • Keep Erickson and hire Wagar as a consultant to make sure of it

As Erickson told me: “They made it clear to us, we see you as your own brand.” And Eagle’s Group Publisher Stephen O’Connor confirmed, they didn’t “want to break something that’s fixed.”

The formal process began in mid-summer, and sometime in the fall an agreement was hammered out for an undisclosed sum. RedStaters themselves earned a share of the proceeds — and not just the site’s directors, either. About 20 contributors overall, including site co-founder and former director Josh Trevino, did as well. (Some were unable to accept the money on account of job-related ethical considerations.) “Nobody’s going to afford a Bentley,” said Domenech. More like “a few car payments.”

·      ·      ·

So what will change? For one thing, Erickson now has a boss in Eagle’s e-business head, Stuart Richens. Upon the initial announcement, the plan was for Human Events online editor Robert Bluey to be a liaison between RedState and Eagle/Human Events — mostly to rope Erickson into their editorial meetings. However, as noted here recently, Bluey will soon depart for Heritage. Now Erickson will work directly with Richens, who like himself and Wagar, is based in Georgia.

Although Krempasky and Domenech retain no official oversight of the company, they will remain with Erickson and Wagar as directors — along with recently-elevated directors Jeff Emanuel and Thomas Crown — but only for making editorial board decisions, not running the business. Erickson wrote in a subsequent announcement, “In the past, we’ve used the terminology ‘Directors’ and we will probably continue to do so.” The titles will remain the same, though it won’t carry the same legal meaning.

When I spoke to principals from Eagle and RedState in mid-December, there were no existing plans for writers from the Human Events site to cross over to the other, but already that’s been the case: Human Events has a regular feature, “Today on RedState” which sends traffic in that direction, while Bluey had a post on RedState just yesterday.

Is there overlap between Human Events and RedState? Both sides believe there is not: While both are obviously online conservative group efforts, they see Human Events as news editorial content whereas RedState is user-generated. Eagle is a publishing house with different labels, and RedState would just be the newest addition.

·      ·      ·

RedState on ScoopRedState on DrupalFor a long time, RedState was thought of as Daily Kos for the right, in terms of being a community politics site, down to using the same content management system. And they too were conscious of this debt, although where dKos is a purely grassroots site, RedState aimed to be more tightly organized. Their mid-summer move from Scoop to Drupal could be seen as one step in that direction. However unintentional, their acquisition by Eagle seems to represent another.

Eagle assures me that RedState members will not start getting regular e-mails (if you’re on their list, they can send a lot) but their interest in RedState is related: RedState has a database of registered users, and they’re always picking up more.

Eagle’s business model is similar to other ideological publications with a limited, but highly self-selected subscriber base. That base of members (with contact information) is valuable, and candidates, campaigns and organizations will pay good money to rent them. Subscribe to the Washington Monthly, wait a few weeks, and in addition to each monthly issue you’ll get the occasional fundraising plea from the William J. Clinton Foundation. Likewise, Eagle rents its lists to such groups on the right, and with more than 20,000 open accounts at RedState, that’s not a bad place to start looking.

Based on their own data, RedState claims their readers skew “a good decade and a half younger” than those at Daily Kos, and certainly younger than those at FreeRepublic. Often ex-military, married with kids, RedState sees a traffic uptick after work hours, perhaps suggesting their readers include a large number who don’t sit in front of a computer all day. While online demographics are notoriously difficult to measure accurately, it seems plausible they have a unique political audience. On the other hand, if they are younger, they might not have quite as much money.

Yet now, Eagle’s resources enable RedState to do move in new directions. More than just a wannabe Daily Kos, by now it’s in a new category: a reciprocal relationship between new media and old. This kind of thing is not entirely new — AOL paid Jason Calacanis some $25 million for Weblogs, Inc., while the New York Times Co foolishly plopped down more than $400 million for About.com — but those have more in common with dot com-era gambles rather than synchronistic strategic acquirements.

Those companies just wanted ad revenue, but Eagle’s acquisition actually strengthens its brand — again, not unlike the Post and Slate. So if at some point in the future (let’s say) the New York Times Co. decides to buy Huffington Post, it will owe less to any success with About.com and more to deals like Eagle-RedState.

P.S. Human Events has found its new editor, replacing both now-at large Terry Jeffrey and Bluey in his online capacity: NRO contributor and Bush 41 dep. Undersec of Defense, Jed Babbin. U.S. News’ Washington Whispers whispers:

One of Babbin’s first tasks: Beef up the paper’s website and capitalize on Internet holdings like RedState.com.

Merry GOP-Round

It’s been a busy few weeks for Republican bloggers in Washington: since late December, a number of Republican aides and activists have changed jobs, created new partnerships or relaunched old ventures. Let’s take a walk:

  • Start with Jon Henke, the Virginia delegate to QandO who this summer took on the thankless task of trying to save George Allen on the very Internet that would eventually do him in. His next job might not be much easier, but it should at least be a little more stable — on January 1 Henke officially announced he’ll be joining the Republican Communications Office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as New Media Coordinator.

    His family will be following him from Richmond, and I hear he could use some tips on finding a place in DC.

  • My headline references one childhood amusement, but let’s invoke another: If there’s a game of musical chairs being played, it’s over at Heritage.

    Last year Mark Tapscott, Director of the Center for Media and Public Policy, decamped for the Washington Examiner editorial page. Shortly thereafter, Tim Chapman took the job, fresh off a stint at Townhall during its late-middle period. Now he too is moving on, to assume the role of Senior Communications Adviser for Sen. Jim DeMint. Taking his place as of February 1 will be Rob Bluey, current online editor of Human Events.

    Replacing Bluey will be TBA, a hotshot young go-getter straight out of… okay, I know you know what TBA means.

  • There probably are not very many new media consultants working for presidential candidates at the moment — Pat Hynes (McCain) and Peter Daou (Clinton) come to mind first — but now there is another: Just a few weeks ago, when ex-Gov. Mitt Romney did not yet have to put an “ex-” before his title, the likely presidential contender hired the blog coordinator of then-Sen. Bill Frist’s VOLPAC. Bluey had the story first, reporting Romney’s acquisition of Stephen Smith, not to be confused with Stephen A. Smith.
  • A development of a different sort is the relaunch of PatrickRuffini.com. When Ruffini accepted the job of eCampaign director for the Republican National Committee in 2005, the first casualty of the job was his popular and beautifully-designed personal blog — by his choice, not the RNC’s. (Doing right by your job and your blog is no easy task, I’ll tell you what.)

    But as of the new year, PatrickRuffini.com is back — and back, and back, and back — with a sidebar blog, retooled 2008 Wire and a tech blog called Overclocked. If you’ve had to take this one out of your aggregator before, you’ll probably enjoy putting all these new feeds back in this time.

  • Maybe the most interesting development is the creation of the David All Group. All has made a name for himself doing creative work, mostly on behalf of Rep. Jack Kingston. I believe All’s firm is the first Republican strategy firm in Washington predicated on social media and the blogosphere. At launch, the site features a blog where All comments on politics and technology, which is already more than a perfunctory product demonstration — see, for instance, his in-depth, screen shot-laden (extra points) recap of how the “macaca” controversy unfolded.

    But something else caught my eye — the business address. I’m not quite an expert on Capitol Hill, but I was pretty sure the listed address was on a residential block. And I’m still a journalist, kind of, so…

    David All Group, located in residential Capitol Hill

    Yup. I don’t know if it’s his home address (and I don’t blame him for not returning that e-mail query) but it’s certainly somebody’s residential address.

  • A much more complex story is the recent sale of community site RedState to Eagle Publishing. That one will get its own post, soon enough.

Yea, Though I Walk Through The Valleywag of the Shadow of Death…

Readers of Blog P.I. probably don’t venture very far into the tech blogosphere (a.k.a. the first blogosphere) but one of its higher profile, more controversial sites, is Valleywag. It’s another title owned by Nick Denton’s Gawker Media, where since February of this year, editor Nick Douglas (formerly of publicity stunt-turned-blog Blogebrity) has chronicled the embarrassing hygienic deficiencies of Google’s top brass, suspicious promotional practices of Google’s founders, and… some other stuff about Google, as I recall. But I kid. It’s a fun blog — Wonkette for the IT department. Or, it was until today.

Sometime over the weekend, Denton dismissed Douglas from the site, implemented a new layout, new typesetting, and apparently a new focus (more money, less sex). Here’s what it looked like yesterday:

Old Valleywag Layout

And what it looks like today:

New Valleywag Layout

Moreover, Denton has installed as interim blogger none other than himself. Which could work — he was a tech journalist prior to being an entrepreneur, and was an early, uh, blogebrity himself (if you remember Glenn Reynolds linking favorably to Denton’s hawkish post-9/11 proclamations, pat yourself on the back).

However, here at Blog P.I. we make no bones about getting a kick out of comment sections that turn on the site’s bloggers, and the reaction to Denton’s first post is truly something to behold. Some of the better responses:

Come on. Valleywag can spill the beans on every other “change in employment,” but you try to pass this crap off when Nick Douglas leaves? What gives. You say, “letting him go” which typically means fired. You can do better than that.

Funny, the design was one of the few in the Gawker empire that I liked. Now I’m not sure which of your generic, overlapping sites I’m on. I guess I’ll just have to deal.

How many photoshop filters had to throw up before you got that logo treatment? It may be the single most ugly thing I have ever seen in my life, and I just saw the “Naked Jen” flickr set from Dave Winer.

Oh, and IBM just called from 1955, they want their Courier font back.

The new site design sucks balls. As for Nick leaving, it COULD be a breath of fresh air (I grew tired of reading The Michael Arrington and Jason Calcanis Show), but you’re already on thin ice due to the less than forthcoming nature of the announcement.

well, it was a nice ride. ass design + letting go of your most valuable asset + renewed focus on crap people care even less about = removal from my daily web surfing routine. best of luck to both of you Nicks!

Before Spiers stopped talking to me, she once offered advice about the prospect of working for Denton or Calacanis: (I’m paraphrasing here) “It’s the old lesser of two evils thing, but at least with Jason you’re gonna get someone who is completely honest and won’t stab you in the back.”

I think this post needs more context. Who is this Nick Denton person and why should we care?

And elsewhere, tech bloggers are none too pleased, either. Here’s Zooomr evangelist Thomas Hawk:

Denton refuses to spill the beans. Was Douglas fired? Did he quit? Douglas is a pretty young guy so I doubt the old “he’s taking time off to spend more time with his family,” line works. Denton should know better than to offer us a weak, “Nick Douglas, the kid we plucked from college to launch Valleywag, will be a great journalist. And we will look stupid for letting him go.” … So you are saying he was fired? Or was he not fired? Very, very weak for a gossip blog Denton.

Ethernet inventor Richard Bennett looks at it from a different angle:

It’s probably a step closer to relevance, but still has a long way to go. … The editor was some pimply-faced teenager from Pennsylvania who had no clue about Silicon Valley life (and still doesn’t), the mix of stories is too sophomoric and Google-centric, the comment policy is bizarre, and the design was too hard to read. The new design is even worse, using a faint monospaced font, the comment policy remains the same, Denton is the temporary editor, and the story mix remains to be demonstrated.

And he’s not alone — Matthew Ingram updated a critical post to praise Denton’s later report on mega-sites Fark and Digg ditching John Battelle’s Federated Media for a new ad network run by Maxim (yes, that Maxim). It’s a new direction, for sure. Whereas Gawker, Defamer and Deadspin reign as the definitive gossip sites for NYC media, Hollywood and professional sports respectively, Valleywag wouldn’t be considered a rival to, say, frequent Douglas target Michael Arrington of the hugely popular TechCrunch. It looks like Denton wishes to compete with Arrington, rather than merely antagonize him. And Denton certainly has the connections to make that work. But Douglas’ Valleywag was something different. Denton’s Valleywag, not so much.

Meanwhile, lit fic crit Edward Champion keeps things short and sour:

Nick Douglas has apparently been shitcanned from Valleywag and all I got was this crummy T-shirt (and one of the worst blog designs I think I’ve ever seen).

As I always say about this time: Tough crowd. But that’s the blogosphere for you, and if anyone’s developed an epidermal layer strong enough to withstand this onslaught, it’s Denton. And if there’s anything serious to be said here, it’s that the blogosphere expects accountability and openness from its counterparts in cyberspace as well as its subjects/targets in meatspace. That’s one thing you would think Nick Denton would have figured out by now.

P.S. For what it’s worth (and I realize it may not be much) I was among the first to notice Blogebrity when the site launched as a preview of an alleged blog equivalent of People Magazine speculate about what it was way back when it launched in May 2005. I would also add that I was among the first to report the truth — it was an entrant in the first Contagious Media contest — although I believe I was the only political blogger to pay it any attention at all. History repeats itself.

Update: Via 10 Zen Monkeys, I learn that I didn’t read far down enough to find the actual best comments to Denton’s first post:

JasonCalacanis: Someone tell little Nicky that I have a job for him running NickDenton.net: all Denton all the time.

NickDouglas: Jason, calling me “little Nicky” is an AWESOME way to make me consider a professional relationship with you.

If there’s an Adam Sandler joke to be made here, I don’t know what it is.

Second Update: Wisely, Valleywag has dropped the use of Courier in the regular copy.

And again via 10 Zen Monkeys, the truth comes out: Douglas was indeed fired, apparently for trying to lure News Corp. (!) into suing Nick Denton. Can’t say that sounds unreasonable.

But as I added to the comments at the end of the linked post, I recall when Denton launched Defamer in early 2004, Mickey Kaus quipped:

Why not go all the way and call it Defendant!

Can’t say that doesn’t sound like Denton’s ethos caught up with him.

The Blog Post Is Half-Full

As impatiently anticipated in this space on Tuesday, the Lieberman ‘06 blog has been loosed upon the world. Despite the admonishments of Atrios, as backed up by DavidNYC and other luminaries, the comments are filling up briskly with anti-Joe sentiment. (Albeit nowhere near as fast as Atrios’ own threads.)

Alas, the only real entertainment to be had is in speculating on the layers of identity within the commentariat. Which are paid stooges from the Lieberman campaign, posting deliberately incendiary remarks to make the Lamont campaign look bad? Which are volunteer stooges from the Lamont campaign, posting obviously amateurish incendiary remarks to make the Lieberman campaign look like they’re planting deliberately incendiary remarks? How many different people are posting as “Ann Coulter,” and are they all on the same side?

The site’s design is fairly dreary, and the sense that has characterized the 2006 Lieberman campaign — that of expectations cruelly dashed — is ably captured by the policy of having every post contain a “Read The Full Blog Post” link, even when (as is frequently the case) there is no more blog post to read. Meanwhile, the tireless exuberance of the comment posse is beginning to resemble that of an unruly high-school class, and within a few posts the blog itself had devolved into the very thing Atrios originally predicted: singling out random anonymous commenters as being representative of the Lamont campaign. (The approved neologism for this is nutpicking. I am more or less resigned to it, but am going to hold out for as long as possible in the hope that someone can come up with something equally clever but less overtly anatomical.)

By all rights this should be hilarious, but for some reason it makes me feel sad instead. Perhaps it’s a seasonal thing.

Consolidating Yglesias

It’s the end of an era, of sorts, and the beginning of another. Matthew Yglesias, the New York-born, Harvard-educated, District-based, recently-bearded, mid-20s American Prospect contributor and one of the first “famous for DC” bloggers, is removing himself from the three (!) blogs he’s been writing for more than a year now — to write a book and reopen his original site, MatthewYglesias.com. And it’s long overdue.

Yglesias has long been a contributor to his employer’s blog, Tapped, and when Josh Marshall launched his TPM Cafe in early 2005, Yglesias was invited to be the only blogger with his own permanent subdomain. His original site (moved to Typepad) became a repository for discussion about the Washington Wizards, indie rock and his Logan Circle neighborhood.

I was always a bit surprised that Yglesias was willing, let alone able to write for three separate blogs: politics for Tapped, policy for TPM Cafe and whatever he wanted at his personal site. True, he is a full-time writer, he had plenty of co-writers at Tapped, and his Typepad site was published no more often than he chose. Nevertheless, dividing your blogging efforts among multiple sites is a troublesome proposition for several reasons. For one, that’s three times the upkeep to keep up with, not to mention as many as three different content management systems to contend with. While it may bring greater exposure to you, the blogger, it requires too much of your readers. Even if you aren’t spread too thin, they will be. To find your latest insight, they may have to visit three separate sites, and plenty won’t bother. (Myself, I usually settled for the personal site, also being a fan of The Decemberists and Rilo Kiley.)

The disjointed nature of this practice limits the blogger as well: You can’t reference a previous post from another of your sites with too much confidence that a reader will have seen it, so you should probably explain it again, just to be sure, and pedantry is the death of blogging. So is sameness. Most bloggers need a relaunch every year or so to keep things fresh, and Yglesias’ latest transformation will probably serve himself and his readers very well — for another year or so.