September 20, 2006 - Blog The Blog

On Monday when Ed gave the dedicated staff the day off from counting, we took a little walk around downtown to see what’s been going on in the physical world. Yesterday, when Ed told us once again to leave our tally counters at home, we used the opportunity to take a little stroll down cyberspace lane to see what’s happening on the local blog scene.

Our first stop was the Doc Searls web blog. Doc is an Internet vet who, in 1 BC (Before Crash), co-wrote the best-selling book, The Cluetrain Manifesto – “markets are conversations - talk is cheap - silence is fatal”. Doc lives in Santa Barbara, but blogs about the whole world. Yesterday, he posted a link to some pictures he took from an airplane, of smoke from The Day Fire, hovering over Santa Barbara.

Our second stop on the local blog tour was Craig Smith. Craig was an attorney and deputy County Council for Santa Barbara. Today, he teaches at Santa Barbara and Ventura Colleges of Law. Previously, Craig blogged about law issues, but since the News-Press Mess has started, that has been his focus. If you ever want to point your out-of-town and out-of-touch friends to a place where they can catch up on the drama at De la Guerra Plaza, there is no better place to point them than Craig’s Blog. But, because blogs put the most recent article at the top, tell them they should read from the bottom of the page to the top for the highest dramatic effect.

Our next blog stop was, I’m Not One To Blog. An Edhat subscriber who you might recognize by the name of George, posts news and interest items, some of which are local. He also shows lots of pictures of his dogs Mookie and Nigel, Edhat dogs of the week back in 2004. Yesterday George was commenting on the post in Craig Smith’s blog about the Wendy McCaw media empire.

Of course our blog tour had to include Blogabarbara, a politically oriented site run by someone with the nom de plume, Sara De la Guerra. Blogabarbara leans a little to the left, but Ms. De la Guerra does a good job of keeping the discourse civil and the facts straight. Blogabarbara has blossomed since the News-Press issue started. It’s been a good place to post opinions that otherwise wouldn’t get out. Last night’s post was an open invitation for her readers to talk about Measure D. What a good idea!

Our tour continued up to Ojai. Things are sure hot there these days (and smoky)! The OjaiPost is a collective blog that focuses on community events and lifestyle. We particularly like Lisa Snider’s writing.

As you heard on Edhat, Michael Seabaugh pulled his column from the News-Press and is only writing in his blog and in the Southeast Missourian, the paper in the town where he grew up. Michael has been posting more frequently now that he no longer works for Wendy and Co. Yesterday’s post was about life expectancy for different groups in America.

As we were running out of time, we quickly clicked on some other local blogs – The Goleta Valley Observer who posts on Goleta politics; Santa Barbara Star Free-Press who posts links to local political stories; Christina's Considerations, a local blog about health and business issues, and lastly, Jawfish, a local blogger we just found out about this week who had some cool pictures of the Day Fire.

Of course, we don’t know everything. If you know of a good local blog that we missed, please clue us in.

Now that no one is reading the News-Press for anything other than obituaries, it’s good that Santa Barbara has so many good blogs where different voices can be heard and new topics explored.

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