This week’s Creative Loafing cover story is a list of (allegedly) the best bloggers in Atlanta. Naturally, one corner of the local blogosphere is unhappy with the story. You can read about it in the comments. GriftDrift’s post sparked a whole thread between several bloggers and Andisheh.

A few comments there are worth highlighting. Amber:

Don’t get too excited about the CL story. Andisheh took great pains to point out that most of the Atlanta blogosphere sucks. Not sure why that was necessary. It’s all very high school esque.

Andisheh:

What’s “bullshit” about pointing out that most local blogs are lousy?

How many local blogs tell you anything of significance that you couldn’t read somewhere else sooner and better? Most of them? Or just some of them?

How many “personal” blogs transcend Dear Diary-ness to offer thoughtful introspection? Most, or just some?

How many news-themed blogs offer information (news or commentary) that didn’t appear somewhere else first? Most or some?

I’m not anti-blogging. I’ve been blogging since 1999 (hence my silly domain name, andy2000.org). I had an Atlanta-themed podcast (My’Lanta) in 2005. I understand, appreciate, and am enthusiastic about the possibilities of Internet media.

Nevertheless, there’s good blogs and there’s bad blogs. There are blogs I like and there are blogs I don’t like. Is it “high school” of me to write that? Perhaps. But not quite as “high school” as pretending that new media is great simply because it’s new.

Grayson:

Making lists is not journalism Andy. It’s just pretty bullshit, and it has nothing to do with the state of social media community in Atlanta.

(The rest of Grayson’s comments are not worth repeating. But if you really want to know why not, I’ll just say there’s a difference between “That’s a stupid idea,” and “You’re a stupid idiot.”)

There’s much more meat in the conversation there, and if you’re interested in all this old media/new media stuff, it’s worth reading all the way through. Amber’s also been compiling a list of relevant posts on other blogs.

I remember when I was young, there was an occasional news story about the impending “information superhighway,” where you might have a whopping 100 channels or more available on your television set. Back then, that seemed exciting. Quickly, the standard joke became, “100 channels, and still there’s nothing good on television.” If I look around, I might still have an old copy of Time, with the cover story about hundreds of television channels streaming straight into your eye. I think I was about 14 years-old at the time.

Anyway. I’m overwhelmed sometimes by all of what’s out there. Right now, there are 82 items sitting in my RSS feed reader (and that’s a low count). I’ve also realized once again that I’ve subscribed to more podcasts than I can keep up with (even if I delete episodes I don’t have a particular interest in). But I don’t really want to unsubscribe from any of it. There’s a lot of really high-quality writing, podcasting and vidcasting out there. But there isn’t really. So I’ve crossed it out.

Quality is too subjective a word. And it’s not really a matter of whether quality can be determined by some borderline old media/new media writer. It’s a quation of whether quality is real. I mean, authenticity isn’t really real when you think about it. Quality is subjective because it’s context-driven. The point of that is that there’s an overwhelming amount of blogs, podcasts and vidcasts that are relevant to me and my interests — and what I pay attention to is actually really great stuff as far as I’m concerned.

Here’s where Andisheh’s mistake lies. It’s not in creating the list. It’s in an inadequate setting of context, which is not a terrible crime — it’s certainly not worth Grayson’s outburst of name calling. In his comment on GriftDrift, Andisheh said, “There are blogs I like and there are blogs I don’t like. Is it ‘high school’ of me to write that?” But in the CL story, every blog listed is introduced with a passage, “Why we love it…”

“I” vs. “We”

There’s an obvious question here of whether Andisheh meant “I” or “we.” Had Andisheh’s story clearly indicated that the blogs listed were his personal favorites, the story probably would have still been skewered by the local bloggers. After all, what makes Andisheh’s opinion worth what he’s getting paid? What makes his opinion worth printing in the local AAN paper, especially on a subject like “bright lights in the blogosphere”? It’s not worth anything, really.

What matters to me, not just as a blogger, or a blog reader, or even as a CL reader, is what I think is relevant to me. I hadn’t heard of most of the blogs listed in the story. And after checking out the other blogs listed in the story, I still don’t really care to add any of their feeds to my reader — they’re not relevant to me.

Being a crazy guy like I am, I’m not afraid to throw in a quick “here’s why this is a good idea in concept.” It’s my simple — well, maybe simple — suggestion. There are blogs out there in the local blogosphere that are meant to reach an audience wide enough to (maybe) appeal to your average CL reader. (CL readers will probably disagree that there is such a thing as the average CL reader — they are, after all, different just like everybody else) Among those select few blogs, there are still only a few beyond that worth putting in print in CL. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong about that.

(And yes, the point is taken that my suggestion is not how the CL story was presented. But I can’t do anything about that. Sorry.)