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The IPL’s Blog List

Here is the IPL’s list of blogs. Love it, hate it, only help us add to it and make it better. Suggestions/comments can be sent here. Our one plea is that they be constructive. Otherwise, say whatever you want.

We are in the process of moving some of our blog resources around. You may find additional blog resources you are interested in at http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/com25.00.00/

If you want your blog to be added, submit it to the suggestions/comments page. We only add blogs with substantive content and that we deem useful to those searching for information.

Table of Contents

By the by, we’ve tried to use the Sears List of Subject Headings to categorize the blogs -- hence, subject headings like "Travel, Voyages and Travels Blogs."

Definitions:

Blog or Weblog or Web log: A web site where the author, or "blogger," periodically posts news, personal thoughts, links, or - in some cases - picture/audio/video files to which visitors to the site usually can comment/respond.

Directory: Here, a directory is a list of blogs arranged in some way (alphabetically, for example).

Search Engine: Generally speaking, a feature on web sites where a user enters text into a text box (usually a white rectangle) and a computer program searches within that web site for occurrences of that text.

Sites about Blogs

For more information about blogs, try the following links:

Searching for Something in a Particular Blog

If a blog does not have any search features, like a search box or directory/site map -- of if those search features really stink -- try entering the name or url of the blog in a search engine along with words related to the information you are looking for. For example, enter "Wonkette baby consuming" into Google.

Blog Hosts and Providers

  • Blogger
    Description: Blogger is a free blogging service from Google that will let you set up a customized blog, publish your thoughts and get feedback from others. You can send your blog posts via email, or even telephone Blogger to leave an MP3 audio file at your site.
  • Bloglines
    Description: A blog host, search engine, and directory that lets you easily manage and share RSS news feeds. The site indexes millions of news articles each day.
  • LiveJournal
    Description: Free and easy to use but robust and customizable, LiveJournal is a popular blogging tool.
  • BlogExplosion
    Description: Free blogging tool that tries to create a community of users visiting each others blogs and thereby raising each member's blog traffic.

Blog Lists and Search Engines

  • Blog Flux Directory
    Description: Blog Flux aspires to be "the spiritual successor to the Eatonweb Portal," which was a well-known blog directory, but it wants to be all things to bloggers, a blogging tool, directory, and more.
  • today’s blogs: The latest chatter in cyberspace … from Slate
    Description: Just as Slate has writers sum up news from newspapers and magazines, so the online magazine also has a writer sum up the day’s most popular memes/themes in the blogosphere. Slate does keep an archive, acessibile through its search function, allowing to look up current and former articles on a particular subject.
  • The BoBs - The Best of the Blogs International Competition
    Description: Deutsche Welle’s, the German international broadcasting service’s, International Weblog Awards. The BOBs Jury sorts through over 100 nominees to choose winners in 11 different categories. The Jury Award is given out by an international panel of blog experts, and User Prizes are also awarded in each of the categories according to users’ votes for their favorite blog.
  • blogdrive
    Description: A great blogging tool for novices (and others). Offers a number of features to enhance one's blog(s) and has a directory of blogs hosted by this site.
  • DeepBlog.com: An Easy Guide & Portal to Great Blogs
    Description: DeepBlog is devoted to being a way for blog newcomers to quickly get acquainted with great bloggers and for others to quickly find substantive blogs in the subject they are looking for in its directory.
  • blogs.feedster.com :: Search only blogs
    Description: Search engine for finding blogs, excluding official news sources. Feedster is a news and opinion aggregator; it is tapped in 2.1 million RSS feeds which automatically sends this site the latest news and information in XML format.
  • Beliefnet: best blogs about religion and spirituality
    Description: Beliefnet’s frequently updated, select list of spritual blogs, which is inclusive of many different religions. There is also a link to BlogHeaven, another part of Beliefnet where posts from the best blogs hosted by Beliefnet are collected.
  • About.com's Best of Blogs Directory
    Description: A list of recommended blogs from About.com's site expert Sheila Ann Manuel Coggins.
  • BlogStreet - Blog Profiles, RSS Ecosystem, Blog Tops, Search and Directory
    Description: Offers a host of methods for searching for Blogs. Aside from a search engine and a directory, you can search for submitted blogs by "Author, Email, Rank, Category, Reviews, Rating, Related Blogs, Books, Music, RSS." There is also "Neighborhood" search, which searches for blogs similar to a given blog based on sites that blogroll each other; "BlogBack" search, which searches for blogs that have a specific individual’s blog in their blogroll; and "Googlatives," which finds blogs that Google finds to be related to your blog.
  • BLOGWISE - Blog Directory and Weblog Research
    Description: Provides a directory of blogs that have been registered with the site categorized in various ways (keyword, country, etc.).
  • Bloogz - The Blog Search Engine
    Description: Bare bones search engine and directory of blogs around the world. While the directory is in Italian, the search engine, which is in English at this URL, lets you search for blogs in English and in other languages.
  • Globe of Blogs
    Description: Blog directory (and search engine) allowing users to browse registered blogs by name, birthday (of blogger), title, topic, location, and gender (of blogger). Most of the blogs are personal blogs.
  • blogdex - the weblog diffusion index
    Description: A research project by the MIT Media Laboratory, the blogdex is meant to be a search engine (an "automated trend discovery system"), but if you’re looking for blogs about something, say arthritis, rather than for blogs that mention it, use the site’s directory. blogdex does list the most popular links, people, and phrases that appear in blogs each day. The goal of this project is to explore how ideas spread through the population. The home page of this site lists "the most contagious information spreading in the weblog community."
  • kinja.com
    Description: Without needing to register for anything, kinja provides news and commentary chosen from weblogs that are, according to its editors, the best blogs on the web. The site is updated frequently.
  • MetaFilter
    Description: In the hopes of exploring the potential of weblogs and in breaking down social barriers, MetaFilter allows anyone to contribute a link or comment to this weblog. People can get the privilege of posting a link to the main page after commenting once or twice and after being registered with the site for a week or so. The result? A grab bag of blogs that changes each day.
  • Library Weblogs
    Description: Geographically categorized directory of library-related weblogs.
  • Blog Search Engine - Blog Directory, Blog Search, Blog Directories - Links Menu
    Description: The site provides a directory of and a search engine for the collection of blogs that have been submitted to this site.
  • Intelliseek’s BlogPulse
    Description: BlogPulse is "an automated trend discovery tool," i.e., a blog search engine and a few automated tools used daily to analyze blogs and discover what topics/subjects people are talking about. The search engine works very well at finding blogs that mention a given search term, e.g. "economy," but less well at finding blogs about the economy. The site focuses on being able to find the most popular links, people, and phrases appearing in blogs.
  • Popdex - the web site popularity index
    Description: This site searches through 14,000 sites daily to find the most popular links. The generated list is not limited to blogs but often lists them and/or what bloggers are blogging about.
  • Daypop - a current events-weblog-news search engine
    Description: This "current events search engine" indexes 59,000 news sites and weblogs and provides several features that allow users to track the most popular themes, posts, and blogs of the day.

Accessibility Blogs and Accessible Blogs about Living with Disabilities

Accessibility refers to providing equal and/or easy access to anything -- in this case, the content of media.

  • Braille Talk
    Description: A blog where people can talk about all things braille: "braille code, grade 1 or 2 braille, writing braille, reading braille, Braille stuff, equipment, the creator of braille," etc.
  • community for the blind:-)’s Journal
    Description: From its LiveJournal "Community Info" page: "This is a community created for those who are blind, visually impaired/challenged, know people who are blind, or interested in blind people:-) Or, if you just want to join "just because" go for it! Post about anything and everything and have lots of fun! Please respect one another and try not to intentionally offend anyone."
  • RP Room
    Description: A community devoted to those who have or lost their vision to Retinitis Pigmentosa. Anyone can be a member, only if they have or know of anyone who has RP.
  • VI Place
    Description: A blog for anyone who is visually impaired, is losing their site, or who knows someone experiencing this impairment.
  • Blind/V.I. Updates & News
    Description: From its LiveJournal "Community Info" page: "Welcome to the blind/vi web site updates journal! Here you’ll find updates on all items on the site: Chat, Message Boards, Games, Sites/Ring, Groups/Communities, and Organizations. I have links to the web site, and the 3 communities including the boards incase anyone wants to go directly to those after reading this journal."
  • LiveJournal for The Deaf/Blind Community
    Description: A LiveJournal livejournal or blog in which members of the deaf/blind community can share advice, ask questions, and comment or point to news items dealing with those those who are deaf and blind.

Books and Reading Blogs

  • the litblog co-op
    Description: From the site: "Uniting the leading literary weblogs for the purpose of drawing attention to the best of contemporary fiction, authors, and presses that are struggling to be noticed in a flooded marketplace." This collaborative blog reviews many new, good books that are not on the bestseller lists, as well as discussions of books by the participating bloggers that one can read or podcast.
  • GalleyCat
    Description: A site hosted by MediaBistro dedicated to books, book reviews, publishing news, and writing and contributed to by various writers/bloggers. A great place to start to find book and publishing resources and news.
  • Maud Newton
    Description: Brilliant and with no direction, Maud Newton rants about books, politics, and her life in particular give hopes to all those who have never had a sincere answer to the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Newton studied literature at the University of Florida, went to law school there, and practiced law with ennui for a few years sometime before starting this highly acclaimed blog. She also at some point started writing and writing reviews on her own.
  • The Millions (A Blog About Books)
    Description: In-depth discussion of books and book news provided by blog creator C. Max Magee, a grad student in journalism at Northwestern and blog contributors Andrew Saikali, an editor for Toronto’s Globe and Mail; Emre Peker, a New York paralegal and booklover; Patrick Brown, an Iowa City writer; and award-winning screenwriter and journalist Rodger Jacobs. The blog also has lots of great links to book news, reviews, and interviews.
  • MOBYlives
    Description: Dennis Loy Johnson, short-story writer and winner of the Pushcart Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, has written his syndicated newspaper column of the same name since 1998, discussing books and writers and occasionally giving hope to those fearing the literary arts are dead as Moby Dick -- who didn’t die in the Melville’s story -- and who is also a fictional creation -- not Melville, the whale. Instead of pondering the viability of the metaphor, attend to the great literary industry gossip and news. There is usually a weekly guest columnist as well.
  • Collected Miscellany
    Description: The blog is maintained by Kevin Holtsberry, a freelance writer in Ohio. Along with other contributors, the blog provides opinions and musings about books and writing. It also has long list of other blogs on art and culture.
  • Blogcritics.org
    Description: A collaborative blog where bloggers review "music, books, film, popular culture, and technology." Popular culture is a grab bag of responses to politics, recent news items, controversial issues, and things to see and do around the country and the world (like the Dachua Beer festival). One can also find discussions/responses to current events in music, books, and film here.
  • NewPages Weblog
    Description: Edited by Casey Hill, the site provides commentary and news on new books, magazines ,and music from an alternative perspective. The blog is part of the NewPages internet portal, a gateway to hundreds of alternative and/or independent literary and publishing magazines, publishers, press links, and review sources. NewPages also has its own book and magazine reviews.
  • The Literary Saloon at The Complete Review: A Literary Weblog
    Description: The Literary Saloon is the weblog of The Complete Review, which reviews books and provides blurbs from other reputable book review sources, as well as news and commentary (which is definitely not restricted to items that can be found on the net).
  • BookBlog
    Description: A book discussion group that meets once a month online. Each member of BookBlog volunteers to choose a book, begin the discussion by making the first post, and moderate that discussion.
  • Bookslut
    Description: Proclaiming a deep love of books and promising to judge judiciously, this site is both a monthly web magazine and a daily blog, providing news, reviews, and commentary. The site was created by the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jessa Crispin.
  • Brandywine Books
    Description: An homage to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, this blog by book lover Phil Wade of Chattanooga, TN, gives book news, reviews, and usually book-related digresses. It also offers a number of other book blogs and links.
  • Cosmopoetica - Books and Reading
    Description: Blogger/poet Chris Lott, who blogs on a variety of subjects on the internet, blogs here on books, book news, art, and Lott’s attendant psychoses. The site also provides numerous links to book, poetry, art, and music sites and blogs.

Cooking Blogs

  • The Hungry Cyclist
    Description: Tom Kevill Davies is a food lover and Amateur cyclist who is taking a unique trip to support a UK charity, Macmillan Cancer Relief. He is looking for the best places to eat on both American continents as he explores about 60 miles of them per day on his bicycle. Visitors to his website can explore his travel log for places and restaurants he has visted, see recipes he has picked up on the way, and leave suggestions for Tom for places to eat. In other words, you can have an effect on the route Tom takes and the food he tries.
  • "Hey, That Smells Great!" Cooking for my kids
    Description: Erika Jurney’s blog provides great recipes that come from her own attempts to please her 3 toddlers, like how to hide vegetables in tomato sauce that the kids will love (as long as they’re not told there are vegetables in there).
  • the Domestic Goddess
    Description: This Canadian blogger took to cooking after taking a break from her nursing career. This blogger shares her recipes, her personal reviews of restuarants, and her life (of course) in Toronto. From the site’s about the "goddess" page: "As you might deduce from my recipes page I am slightly more interested in baking sweets than in cooking meals. While I do enjoy cooking savory treats, it just seems that I lean towards the sugary delicacies more often; I simply find myself being more creative with desserts. On top of that, I’ve decided to start a home-based business; cakes and other desserts for order."
  • Chocolate and Zucchini
    Description: Clotilde Dusoulier is a Parisian epicure whose blog has drawn 200,000 visitors a month with her easy-to-make recipes, refined tastes, and brief glimpses into her life in France. She also has a food column on NPR.org. The ’Zucchini’ in the title represents her preference for natural, fresh (but not too expensive) food, and the ’Chocolate’ represents her ’decidedly marked taste for anything sweet in general and chocolate, glorious chocolate, in particular.’
  • Orangette
    Description: A trip to Paris inspired this Francophile, former Ph.D. student to cook as much as possible and write about her favorite and newly discovered recipies and dishes. Her blog often comments on her own life, but she almost always weaves these anecdotes around something food-related.
  • chez pim
    Description: Providing excellent restaurant reviews, perpetual Ph.D. student Pim is a San Franciscan high-tech worker who loves to find the best meals at the best restaurants, and she travels a lot to London and Paris, providing an insider’s look at the restaurant across the pond.
  • Cooking For Engineers (CfE)
    Description: Aside from providing recipes, ranting, and rambling, CfE provides on their site a table of contenets, a recipe index, an ingredients dictionary, a measurement converter, and a forum for other gourmands/gourmets to talk.
  • Cooking with Amy
    Description: Providing recipes, reviews, and some San Francisco bay area history and culture, Amy Sherman has won several awards for this blogs. She also provides a drop-down menus for food ideas sorted by the type of meal you’re eating (breakfast, dinner, etc.).
  • foodie
    Description: Advertising executive Joe DeSalazar started this blog as a personal log of dishes and recipes. DeSalazar has spent years perfecting techiniques of master chefs. This New Yorker has been a chef in three-star restaurants and writes his own food column.
  • Simply Recipes
    Description: Tech consultant Elise Bauer started posting her family recipes to her website. Increased time with her family, the innovation of blogging, and the allure of using fresh ingredients in tasty recipes led to the creation of this site, focused on recipes and often the stories behind the blogger’s encounter with the recipes.
  • Super Chef Blog
    Description: Markedly different than other cooking blogs, Super Chef Blog began as a book, Super Chef, that investigated how the superstars of the culinary scene (a la Emeril) were created. This blog follows the creation and going-ons of the "super chefs," i.e., chefs that had become so popular as to expand beyond the culinary scene.
  • The Food Section
    Description: From the "About the Food Section" page: "Born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised on the mean streets of the "Gourmet Ghetto" of Berkeley, California, Josh Friedland has pursued a lifelong passion for cooking and dining. In July 2003, he turned his obsession into The Food Section (thefoodsection.com), a pioneering weblog about food, wine, and travel. Based in New York City, The Food Section publishes original food writing and photography and scours the web for links to culinary news and events, recipes, and gastronomical ephemera."
  • Vinography: a wine blog
    Description: This San Francisco blogger shares his knowledge and love of wine, from where to buy to what food you should eat with it. The blog offers many links to other blogs, sites, and books on wine.
  • Amuse Bouche
    Description: Jo is in a dead-end IT job and had been speaking with Brian, also in a dead-end IT job, through their blogs. They both had a great interest in cooking, and they decided to enter the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts in Massachusettes. Amuse Bouche "is all about Foodie Stuff" from Jo’s perspective, but link-clicking will take you to other blogs sharing Brian’s and Jo’s experiences as they go through culinary school and life-in-general, as well as other blogs on food.
  • à la cuisine!
    Description: Clement, a 25-year-old media design entrepreneur living in Toronto, readily admits to not having expertise in cooking but also admits an incredible fascination "by the ingredients, techniques and processes that make what we eat taste mediocre, good, great, or incredible." He takes you on his various cooking adventures, sharing recipes and techniques learned along the way.
  • Bourrez Votre Visage - musings on all things caloric
    Description: From the web site: "With writers in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, Bourrezvisage covers the food scene in the Northeast and around the country. More than just restaurant reviews, the site devotes extensive coverage to food news, wine, home cooking, recipes, food shopping, and even the occasional book review. Bourrezvisage founder Matt Kantor also offers his unique perspective as an aspiring chef who has recently graduated from The Culinary Institute of America. In addition, Bourrezvisage is home to Food Blog Central, a project to unite and organize online food writing, and Food Favorites, our directory of artisanal food producers."
  • Accidental Hedonist
    Description: Kate, an aspiring travel and food writer and Seattle resident, provides the content for this great web site providing lots of recipes, restaurant reviews, and deep thoughts on food, like how Seattle’s Best Coffee doesn’t even make the top 4.
  • FoodBloggers
    Description: A webring of almost 100 food- and cooking-related blogs.
  • Deus Ex Culina
    Description: A blog written by two high school friends now living on separate coasts who share cooking and food-related news with each other and the visitors of their blogs.
  • Foodgoat … something tasty every day
    Description: Rochelle Ponsaran, Ladygoat, is usually the author of this blog, describing all the food she and her husband, Foodgoat, eat. More food-related news and discussions than recipes, this blog discusses the bas o haut couture, from White Castle sliders and confessions about wanting to see Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle to creating Jambalaya.
  • Asian Online Recipes
    Description: Blog that helps the novice cook learn how to cook the foods of the Far East. Each blog post provides a lesson on the basics of the Asian style of cooking.
  • Chronicles of a Curious Cook
    Description: Blog belonging to CheapCooking.com, a California resident’s personal web site devoted to helping people cut down their grocery bill but not skimp on tastiness or tastefulness.
  • gastronome
    Description: Collaborative blog where recipes, menus, menu-planning, and informal restaurant reviews are shared with visitors to the blog.
  • Food & Cooking Blogs at About.com
    Description: About.com provides at least 10 or so blogs that its site guide has picked out, as well as a number of other food-related links.
  • Saute Wednesday
    Description: A blog about food-related news and articles written by food columnist Bruce Cole. A great site to find out what has been written about food that isn’t a recipe.
  • KIPlog’s Foodlog - links
    Description: A list of food-related blogs appended to a food-related blog which often lists new blog sites about food, which is related to another weblog called Knowledge Is Power (KIP)

Economics (& Business) Blogs

  • BL Ochman’s whatsnextblog.com - from whatsnextonline.com
    Description: B.L. Ochman writes whatsnextonline.com, a marketing tactics newsletter specializing in online marketing and PR. Her blog discusses "Internet strategy, marketing, public relations, politics with news and commentary."
  • Cafe La Coach
    Description: Updated weekly, Kathy Mallary provides "Inspiration, ideas and business resources for women who are up to something," i.e., women who are independent professionals (coaches, consultants and other solo-practitioners) rather than women planning mischief. In Mallary’s own words, "…I specialize in working with businesswomen who want to reclaim their vitality and creativity in a spiritual way. If this is you -- or someone you know -- be sure to visit my web site for lots of resources and a full listing of upcoming events and speaking engagements."
  • business2blog - The Business 2.0 Blogs
    Description: This is the blog for Business 2.0, a monthly magazine about business, technology, and innovation. It offers a little more substance and variety than the typical business/technology-related blog.
  • EconLog Library of Economics and Liberty
    Description: EconLog is edited by Arnold Kling and housed by Econlib, The Library of Economics and Liberty. His blog discusses news and "insights" in economics, a searchable archive of posts, provides help and tips in using the Econlib, a searchable archive of EconLog’s predecessor site, and current economics-related articles and complete online works and reprinted essays available through Econlib.
  • ArgMax.com - Economics News, Data, and Analysis
    Description: The former economics guide at About.com, John Irons, now runs this blog, which along with its parent site (which he also maintains), discusses economics news, data, and analysis.
  • The Knowledge Problem
    Description: Maintained by Lynne Kiesling, head of Northwestern University’s Department of Economics and this blog’s primary contributor, this blog provides discussion of economic issues (for the most part) and provides links to many other good economic blogs.
  • winterspeak.com
    Description: A blog about economics as often as it is about technology, with some digression in-between, written by a computer programmer who has a degree from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. The blog often links to other online news items and provides commentary by the author.
  • Institutional Economics Home Page
    Description: Stephen Kirchner, an economist currently finishing his PhD in monetary economics at the University of New South Wales, provides news and commentary on international economics.
  • Adam Smith Institute Blog - Europe’s favorite think tank blog
    Description: Posts to this blog for a major UK free-market think-tank can be on a number of topics, but most usually have to do with either economics, taxes, or business.
  • EconoPundit
    Description: Provides brief commentary and links to online news items on the economic side of politics. Also gives a number of political and economic blogs.
  • Small Business Trends
    Description: Two Ohio business entrepreneurs maintain this blog covering news suggesting trends that are influencing the global small business market. One great feature of this blog is the PowerBlog Review, a weekly post reviewing other business-related weblogs.

Education Blogs

  • A Homeschoolpedia
    Description: A blog dedicated to providing resources to those wishing to pursue the autodidactic method of education.
  • Jerz’s Literacy Weblog (Online & Offline Literacy Links; Dennis G. Jerz)
    Description: Jerz began this website 6 years ago while teaching at the University of Wisconsin as a resource for his students, but he has been constantly expanding its resources on teaching instruction, technical writing, writing on the internet, writing blogs, and writing e-mails, all of which he discusses in his blog. He is now teaching at Seton Hill courses in literature, journalism, and - his focus - writing for the internet.
  • Google Directory - education weblogs
    Description: Branch of Google’s directory listing weblogs for education.
  • Universities Weblog - "Finding the best college for you"
    Description: Mark J. Drozdowski’s blog is dedicated to providing information and informed commentary to future students trying to decide on a college to attend. He has published a great deal about American higher education, and his blog is definitely a one-stop-spot-to-shop for informative materials about choosing a college.
  • Online Universities Weblog Finding the right online college you need
    Description: Mike Standaert is the US correspondent for euro-correspondent.com, a network for journalists covering European and European Union affairs. In this blog, he provides information, commentary, and testimonials for students taking or interested in taking online courses.
  • Educational Bloggers’ Network
    Description: The Bay Area Writing Project and Webloggers.com sponsor this site that provides a forum for teachers and professionals using weblogs for educational purposes to share information, links, and news to help integrate weblogs further into their teaching. You can find many education-related blogs from this point.
  • Weblogg-ed - using weblogs and rss in education
    Description: Will Richardson works at a New Jersey high school as its Supervisor of Instructional Technology and Communication. In this blog, he shares news and commentary about using blogs, RSS, Wiki, and other forms internet technology in the K-12 classroom.
  • EduBlog Insights EduBlog Insights
    Description: Ann Davis works at Georgia State University’s Instructional Technology Center and uses this blog to share news about and to comment on how to use blogs in education.
  • UThink Blogs @ U Libs @ U Minn - directory
    Description: From the UThink homepage: "UThink is available to the faculty, staff, and students of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and is intended to support teaching and learning, scholarly communication, and individual expression for the U of M community." Home page has a Blog Directory link listing all of the blogs on the site.

History Blogs

  • World History Blog
    Description: From the homepage: "Blog that features different aspects of world history. I can’t cover it all but sites dealing with any historical issue or topic are possible future posts. Also includes sites which discuss teaching history. Some descriptions for sites are taken from the Open Directory Project. Created by Miland Brown who is an academic working in North America."
  • History News Network Blogs
    Description: List of blogs hosted by the History News Network site, which comes out of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. The entire site is devoted to correcting the historical inaccuracies that come up in the media, but the blogs tend to speak on politics and current events from a historian’s point of view.
  • Medievalist Weblogs
    Description: A directory of blogs about Medieval history, with an indicator as to how frequently the blog’s posts have Medieval
  • Ancient Classical History - Comprehensive Ancient Greek and Roman History Site
    Description: Blog from N.S. Gill, the site guide at About.com’s Ancient/Classical History section. No surprise that this blog discusses Ancient/History and related news.
  • 1169 and counting….
    Description: A blog about Irish history and politics.
  • FactsOfIsrael.com
    Description: A pro-Isreal site whose blog discusses news regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
  • EI’s (Electronic Intifada) Diaries project
    Description: A non-profit, independent publication that takes submissions from people living in and visiting Palestine.
  • Cronaca
    Description: A blog providing news and commentary on art, archeology, history.
  • Pepys’ Diary
    Description: An interesting use of a blog. Each day provides a new entry from the diary of Samuel Pepys. Visitors commentaries for each post are listed as annotations.
  • American-Iraq Conflict (2002-present)
    • Informed Content
      Description: A History Professor at the University of Michigan specializing in the Mideast, South Asia, and Relgion, and writer of Sacred Space And Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi’ite Islam, Juan Cole provides (as the subtitle to his weblog says) "Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion."
    • Iraq 2003: Sources of News
      Description: The University of Windsor’s Leddy Library has put a directory of librarian-selected links to mainstream and alternative sources of coverage on the Iraq war, including links to weblogs.
    • Kevin Sites Blog
      Description: First-person account and photos of life on the front lines of war, including the Battle for Fallujah. From the site: "Dispatches from a life in conflict. Kevin Sites is a freelance solo journalist currently on assignment for NBC News in Iraq, but this site is a personal website not affiliated with or funded by NBC News."
    • Baghdad Burning
      Description: First-person account from a 26-year-old girl (our guess since her blog started at 8/1/2003 and she said in her first post that she was 24) living in Baghdad who talks about war, politics, and occupation. An eye-opening and informative read from an Iraqi perspective on the American occupation and the war.
    • Warblogs:cc — Content from the best of the war blogs
      Description: The idea behind Warblogs::cc is to create a one-stop-spot-to-shop for war news, and for news headlines, it is that. The site falls a little short on its promise in terms of blogs, with only five participating blogs (Back to Iraq, Warblogging, Daily Kos, Talk Left, The Agonist), but three of those blogs — Back to Iraq, Warblogging, and Daily Kos -have been some of the most influential and widely read war blogs. If we had to choose "One source for war news" (the site’s description of itself), this site would be at the top of our list.
    • Back to Iraq 3.0
      Description: Allbritton was an Associated Press and New York Times reporter in 2002 looking for stories in Iraqi Kurdistan. He went back in March 2003 just in time for the war and became, as he puts it, "the Web’s first fully reader-funded journalist- blogger," raising $15,000 through the support of readers. As the 3.0 indicates, Allbritton is back in Iraq but permanently this time, reporting for Time Magazine and others and, of course, his own blog.
    • The Agonist | thoughtful, gloomy, timely
      Description: Looking to be the muscle that gets the collective body moving, the Agonist is a collective blog that accepts stories from registered members. The stories are screened by the site’s editors, but comments and discussion are not. Most of the stories are on the war.
    • Healing Iraq
      Description: Adopting an original angle on news about Iraq, or rather abandoning the It’s-all-going-to-heck slant, Zeyad, an Iraqi dentist, gives his take on post-Saddam Iraq, frustrated with the negative media coverage, in an attempt to help Iraq finally heal after so many decades of misrule.
    • No War Blog
      Description: This is a collective blog where bloggers can register their blog on either the left or right side of the page, indicating their political preference. Moderates, independents, and others are free to join as well. However, everyone on this site is unified in the view that the Iraq war was wrong, or at least that is how the site started. The header on the site seems to have shifted to opposition to war with Syria, but Iraq is still the hot topic of discussion.
    • Juan Cole: Informed Comment
      Description: A Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan gives his take on current and past events in the middle east and in Islam. He provides links to his own articles and to news and blogs that he discusses.

Journalism and Mass Media Blogs

  • mediabistro.com
    Description: Provide news, job listings, and a forum for "anyone who creates or works with content, or who is a non-creative professional working in a content/creative industry." It also hosts gossip blogs about media news in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., respectively called FishBowlNY, FishBowlLA, and FishBowlDC. From the "About US" page: "Our mission is to provide opportunities (both on- and offline) for you to meet each other, share resources, become informed of job opportunities and interesting projects, improve your career skills, and showcase your work."
  • Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ): Blogs and more
    Description: From the site: "Following are some web sites that SEJ members have recommended as useful to any journalist covering environmental issues. Some are blogs, some forums, others news sites or feeds."
  • Editor &Publisher
    Description: While perhaps not a blog, this site does provide daily columns and news. From the "ABOUT US" web page: "Editor &Publisher is the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates. Based in New York City, the magazine dates back to 1884...In January 2004, E&P switched from weekly to monthly publication, while revamping its Web site to offer more breaking news and content on a daily basis. E&P Online offers breaking news free to all visitors in our Top Stories section. Each week, selected proprietary stories from E&P staff are made available free to all visitors, but the majority of our analysis, industry news, features, columns, and trends are restricted to E&P subscribers."
  • Bloggerman - Keith Olbermann of MSNBC’s Countdown
    Description: A current events blog by Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC’s "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," a newscast that runs through the top stories of the day in descending order of importance. We’re not sure who makes the judgment call on that, but the site gives extra news tidbits on some of the big stories of the moment.
  • editor’s cut
    Description: Instead of being the first with the latest, this left-leaning blog by Katrina vanden Heuvel, the managing editor of the political magazine, The Nation, rather reflects on what has been on the news and draws visitors’ attention to what should have been there.
  • Blogcritics.org
    Description: A collaborative blog providing reviews of literature, movies, music, and pop culture -- pop culture being a grab bag of consumer items, new fads, politics, recent news items, controversial issues, and things to see and do around the country and the world (like the Dachua Beer festival). One can also find discussions/responses to current events in any of the aforementioned categories. Well worth a visit.
  • I Want Media - Media News & Resources
    Description: The title describes this blog created and maintained by Patrick Philips, a self-described "media aficionado" interested in trying to provide the latest media news and resources covering the rapidly changing media landscape.
  • Gawker
    Description: This collaborative blog is basically a New York gossip column, but it often has good but trendy media and media industry news. Snide and more than a little crude, it bears the traits of being published by Nick Denton’s Gawker Media.
  • PaidContent.org
    Description: Collaborative blog run by an independent media and information company, it generally covers the business aspects of entertainment and media news. Less discursive than the typical blog.
  • Blog Report from the Comlumbia Journalism Review’s Campaign Desk
    Description: A collaborative blog run by CJR for the purpose of critiquing and expanding election campaign coverage.
  • CyberJournalist List -- J-Blogs (Professional journalists’ Weblogs)
    Description: List of blogs published on professional news sites. CyberJournalist.net provides resources, commentary, and news in regards to how the Internet, media convergence and new technologies are changing journalism. The entire site, written and published by Jonathon Dube, an award-winning print and online journalist, offers various resources (and other blogs) dealing with journalism, news, news coverage, and blogging.
  • Lost Remote TV Weblog
    Description: Not exactly a journalist weblog, this collaborative blog discusses the interaction of TV and new media. News and commentary about TV, TV-related websites, and blogs are shared.
  • Poynter Online - Romenesko
    Description: Jim Romenesko is a Senior Online Reporter for the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based non-profit school for journalists. This blog provides help to journalists in the form of media industry news, commentary, and the latest gossip.
  • BuzzMachine … by Jeff Jarvis
    Description: A personal blog by the Sunday Editor of the NY Daily News and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner. He responds to a lot of other journalist and media blogs as well as to current events.
  • TVnewser
    Description: Formerly CableNewser, this blog is by Maryland college student obsessively follows cable news and the television news industry. Network news gets covered as well, but it’s not the focus. It’s a great place to go for ratings and coverage of news events.
  • unmediated
    Description: A collaborative blog about developing or decentralized media production and distribution, such as how wireless internet access will be distributed or how video blogs have problems with URLs and the www.
  • PressThink
    Description: A faculty member at NYU’s Department of Journalism, Jay Rosen’s blog follows his interests, study, and teaching in media criticism, press ethics, cultural journalism, and the journalistic profession.
  • EdCone.com
    Description: A columnist for News & Record, a newspaper in North Carolina, his personal weblog covers blogging and the forays (or perhaps well-trodden paths now) that it’s making into journalism.
  • Hardblogger
    Description: The official MSNBC blog for the TV show Hardball’s panelists and contributors

Law Blogs

  • Elder Law Prof Blog
    Description: From the "Web Profile" page: "Professor Kim Dayton is a nationally-known expert in the field of elder law. She is a co-author of Advising the Elderly Client...and Elder Law: Readings, Cases, and Materials...She founded the Kansas Elder Law Network, a web-based compendium of resources on elder law, in 1995. In 2003, KELN was renamed the National Elder Law Network, www.neln.org. In 2005, Professor Dayton started Elder Law Prof Blog, a member of the Law Professor Blogs Network. Professor Dayton’s current research interests include end-of-life issues, financing long term care for the elderly and disabled, and the allocation of health care resources across generations."
  • The Trademark Blog
    Description: Blog from Martin Schwimmer, a lawyer who has represented some of the most famous trademarks in the world. Cases and legal news regarding trademark law are covered/discussed.
  • SCOTUSBlog
    Description: Blog from Goldstein & Howe, P.C., the only law firm in the United States that is principally devoted Supreme Court litigations. Provides expert analysis of recent federal and supreme court cases (SCOTUS being, of course, the Supreme Court Of The United States).
  • JURIST’s Paper Chase - Legal news worth thinking about
    Description: A collaborative blog maintained by Professor Bernard Hibbits and law students at the University of Pittsburgh, who handle the research and reporting. The site essentially -- and very extensively -- provides currents events through a legal lens with helpful links to explain items like the history of social security.
  • Netlawblog
    Description: A blog dedicated to raising awareness of methods of using technology, and the internet in particular, to provide legal services to underserved markets.
  • Ernie the Attorney
    Description: A directory of law-related blogs, most of which are run through blogspot.com.
  • GROKLAW
    Description: Pamela Jones, editor of this blog, is a journalist with paralegal background who fell into learning IT and then fell in love with it and with open source software. When SCO, the makers of Unix, filed its lawsuit against GNU\Linux, Jones began to follow all the developments of the case. Now, the blog is a detailed reference resource covering this ongoing, potentially historic case of proprietary software vs. free/open source.
  • IPKat - fishing for IP stories for YOU
    Description: A blog by Jeremey Philips and Ilanah Simon who cover Intellectual Property law news and issues across the pond, that is, in London.
  • Lessig Blog
    Description: A blog maintained by Lawrence Lessig, author of "Code and other laws of cyberspace," and professor at Stanford Law School. Lessig frequently argues that Intellectual Property (IP) law does more to stifle creativity than digital piracy (e.g. old Napster, P2P file sharing, bootleg DVDs) does.

Library, Librarians, and Library Science Blogs

  • LiS Interactive Webcasting
    Description: Not blogs per se but podcasts (audio files you can listen to). From the site: "Welcome to LISRadio. This is a new and exciting series of interactive webcasts brought to you by the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Our aim with these webcasts is to help in ’…creating and exploring the intersection of information and learning.’ We hope to present interesting and stimulating conversations with movers, shakers, and the odd gadfly or two in libraryland."
  • Filipino Librarian
    Description: "For those interested in knowing more about the Philippines, Filipiniana, Philippine libraries and Filipino librarians."
  • librarian.net
    Description: It would be wrong of library students to drop out of their programs and simply read Vermonter Jessamyn West’s blog about creatively integrating techonology and a human-centered approach into library services. But it would be understandable. A great blog.
  • Library Technician
    Description: An anonymous blogger talks about his experiences being a library technician, with his viewpoints about the profession, about libraries, about the job market for library techs, and about the relation of libraries to technology and service in general.
  • The Information Literacy Land of Confusion
    Description: Librarian Michael Lorenzen from Mt. Pleasant, MI discusses information literacy, search engines, librarianship, library instruction, and user education. Rambling only to keep us awake, Lorenzen often posts very useful tools for librarians, e.g. the IllumiRate Directory.
  • oss4lib -- Open Source Systems for Libraries
    Description: Lists open source or free software designed for libraries and provides news about ongoing open source projects and related issues that could benefit libraries. Maintained by Dan Chudnov, staff programmer at Yale’s Center for Medical Informatics.
  • Information Research Weblog
    Description: The weblog for the e-journal Information Research whose purpose is to allow the journals readers to share news of publications, Web sites, or the like, related to information science, records management, librarianship.
  • -usr-lib-info || hacker-librarian haven
    Description: An attempt to turn hackers into librarians and vice-versa. This collaborative blog encourages submissions that fit provided editorial guidelines. The blog’s post’s are usually pretty technical.
  • Beyond the Job
    Description: A blog maintained and mainly contributed to by two reference librarians/professors in library and information science, Sarah Johnson and Rachel Singer Gordon. The blog provides tips, news, and notices for and regarding library jobs. These two bloggers also maintain other sites that provide listings of library jobs.
  • Information Literacy Weblog
    Description: A blog from two UK professors, Sheila Webber and Stuart Boon, and one Scottish professor, Bill Johnston, its aim is to spread news and information about information literacy worldwide, and the blog seems to both spread the information worldwide and spread news from around the world (or at least from Europe and not just the U.S.).
  • LibraryLawBlog
    Mary Minow features fascinating library law news now and again so surfers interested in library law can commisserate or opinionate -- maybe more. Alright, I’ll stop alliterating and being glib about a really great blog covering legal library and library-related legal news. (So I lied slightly; now I’ll stop.) Minow was a librarian before she went to law school, and now she tries to share pertinent knowledge she learned with librarians.
  • The Shifted Librarian
    You cannot judge a book by its cover or a blog by its lack of attractive graphic design elements. Jenny Levine’s blog on blogging, techonology, and libraries has so much Google juice that if you just type "Jenny" in Google--well, guess what pops up? Possibly sick of this fact by now, Levine was awestruck at the power of information superhighway rather early on (1992 or so) and has now devoted at least her blog to helping librarians become tech savvy.
  • Peter Scott’s Library Blog
    Another great, techie librarian sharing his knowledge of how librarians can use the internet to help patrons, Scott compiled the first hypertext index of the Internet resources, Hytlenet, first released in 1991, and he maintains the following sites: Libdex, the libary index; Library Weblogs (by and for librarians); Publishers’ Catalogues; Weblogs Compendium, a site for blogging resources; and allrecordlabels.com, a list of record label companies.

Medical Personnel and Health Blogs

  • Dr. Deborah Serani: Psychological Perspectives
    Description: From the site: "I am a psychologist who specializes in trauma and depression. Current issues and articles that impact the human psyche will be presented here. The information provided in this blog is to be used for educational purposes only. It should NOT be used as a substitute for seeking professional care, diagnosis or treatment of any psychological disorders." Dr. Serani also responds to comments to her posts.
  • Family Medicine Notes
    Description: Reider says that he thinks this is the longest running medical weblog and the second one ever created. This personal weblog recounts his own ongoing experiences in his primary care practice. Reider, an asst. professor of family medicine and asst. dean of medical informatics, also came up with the idea and helps to maintain Medical News Feeds or www.medlogs.com.
  • Medical News Feeds -- www.medlogs.com
    Description: "A Medical News & Weblog Aggregator," created by Jacob Reider (the idea man) and David Ross (the programmer). Reider also runs Docnotes or Family Medicine Notes, which he thinks is the longest running medical weblog and the second one ever created. This brainchild, medlogs, may however be the more useful as it tracks whenever participating medical weblogs and news sites update their entries and lists those updates.
  • Living Code, hosted by Corante
    Description: Richard Gayle has been working in the field of biotechnology for two decades. Arguably, this blog started as internal newsletter at Immunex which morphed into a column Gayle maintained for 16 years. Gayle left Immunex when he thought a merger would interfere with his ideas about using technology to more efficiently communicate biological ideas. He now runs a small company, writes, serves on the advisory board for a foundation created by ex-Immunex employees and devoted to medical education and the environment, and serves on the board for Etubics, a small startup company dedicated to creating new vector vaccines (vaccines that induce cells to build up immunities to diseases).
  • Medpundit
    Description: Medpundit is written under the pseudonym Sydney Smith, but she is a family physician who has been practicing since 1991. She comments on a lot of recent medical news or news from a practicing physician’s point of view, not to mention her own experiences..
  • GruntDoc
    Description: Blog from a Emergency Medicine physician in Texas, this blogger describes what he encounters daily in his profession.
  • Mental Health Resources for Consumers and Professionals
    Description: About.com’s Mental Health Resources section has a blog providing news and information in regards to mental health. The site is maintained by Leonard Holmes, Ph. D., a clinical psychologist who specializes in abuse survivors and health psychology. Great starting point for looking anything related to mental health. Generally provides news and information rather than personal experiences.
  • Panic - Anxiety Disorders Help and Support
    Description: About.com’s Panic/Anxiety Disorders section is maintained by Cathleen Henning, someone who recovered from being so overwhelmed by anxiety disorders that she was homebound in 1996. She found the internet to be a lifeline in this period, and she hopes she can provide similar net help to others. Generally provides news and information rather than personal experiences.
  • The Bloviator
    Description: A blog about public health care news and policies, this site provides not only news but also extensive commentary with no apology.
  • The Health Care Blog - Matthew Holt - Health Care Strategist
    Description: Holt is a general health care consultant blogging informatively about the drug industry, the medical profession’s use of the internet, insurance, policy, doctors, and whatever else strikes his fancy.

Movie (Motion Picture) Blogs

  • DVD Verdict
    Description: A really fun, alternative review site of DVDs. This collaborative blog has a string of movie buffs, each given the title "Judge" on this site, reviewing new and old DVD releases. About five reviews per business days are added to the site each week.
  • filmfodder
    Description: Mac Slocum and company are movie zealots justifying their obsessions by sharing reviews and, less often, movie news.
  • Milk Plus - a discussion of film
    Description: A collaborative weblog providing news, reviews, and discussion about movies, preferably but far from always non-Hollywood fare. The name is an homage to Stanley Kubrick and his film A Clockwork Orange.
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES Movie Reviews & Previews
    Description: If you like to read the reviews of movie before going, don’t waste your time with individual reviewers. See what most of the professional critics said at once and see how many reviewers gave it a positive rating by checking the tomatometer. If you want to skim the red "cream of the crop," top reviewers’ opinions are kept separate from the rest, and they get their own tomatometer. Rotten Tomatoes covers DVDs/VHS movies today and provides some hosting for "personal publishing (journals)" that are usually about movie news and reviews. Since amateur reviews were once taken but no longer, this part of the site is what makes it blog-related in our opinion. The site was created by Senh Duong in 1998.
  • Blogcritics.org
    Description: SEE ABOVE
  • GreenCine Daily
    Description: Many people claim to cover alternative and art house films. The primary contributor to blog and the editor its Siamese sister site GreenCine actually deliver on this claim. News, commentary, reviews, and links to more of the same can be found on this site.
  • blogs.indiewire.com - blogs from the indieWIRE blogging community
    Description: Pull quotes and a directory of blogs hosted by blogs.indiewire.com itself, "an invitation-only blogging community that includes indieWIRE staff, contributors and a collection of participants in the independent film industry." indieWIRE is a well-known website where independent filmmakers and fans can interact and find the latest news and information about independent films and the industry itself.

Politics Blogs

  • The World Forum
    Description: A forum that encourages "the participation of people of all people and religious ideologies from the entire world." The site creator acknowledges a left-wing view, but he also expresses a deep desire to encourage intellectual debate and discussion betwen folks of all viewpoints.
  • All Spin Zone - Blog Zone
    Description: From the "About Us" page: "There’s hundreds, nay thousands, nay hundreds of thousands of progressive political blogs and message boards up and running. We visit many of them on an infrequent basis. Some reflect our own thoughts, some we read simply to see what the other side is thinking or, on occasion, to calibrate our own personal views. What most of these blogs and message boards lack is a unilateral way to force our (sometimes twisted) views on you — kind of like George Bush’s unilateral action in Iraq, if you want to look at it that way."
  • Michele Malkin
    Description: Michele Malking is a Fox News Contributor, and so her blog comes from the right side of the political spectrum. From the "ABOUT" page: "My column, now syndicated by Creators Syndicate, appears in nearly 200 papers nationwide. My first book, Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores (Regnery 2002), was a New York Times bestseller."
  • TPM Cafe
    Description: From the "About TPMCafe" page: "TPMCafe is a public meeting place to read about and discuss politics, culture and public life in the United States. The site hosts both blogs and public discussion areas. It is owned and operated by TPM Media LLC, edited by Joshua Micah Marshall, and powered by the collaborative media application, Scoop."
  • The Huffington Post
    Description: Former conservative (but not calling herself a liberal), Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of ten books. She has done numerous guest spots on political talk shows and news shows. Her blog attracts many well-known political figures and celebrities who comment on various events around the nation.
  • HughHewitt.com
    Description: Hugh Hewitt writes for the right-wing magazines WorldNetDaily and Weekly Standard and hosts a nationally syndicated radio show. On this site, this three-time Emmy winner blogs from a right-wing perspective on news and events.
  • Right Wing News
    Description: Upset after "the horrible, biased job the media did in covering Florida [the 2000 election]," John Hawkins started a right-wing web site providing heated political discussion and a gateway to right-wing blogs, websites, and more heated political discussion.
  • LiberalOasis
    Description: Liberal Oasis provides news analysis from a liberal perspective through its own blogs and features links to left-wing blogs, magazines, and other resources and feat. A great place to start when looking for liberal news and opinions on the web.
  • afro-netizen
    Description: Christopher M. Robb started a list-serv in 1999 that was spreading news to the small community of Africa-Americans who were getting there news and opinions online. The list-serv has expanded into a website and blog "dedicated to informing, inspiring, and engaging people of African descent and others for the benefit of our community and its scions by continuing to strength[en] the foundation upon which future afro-netizens will thrive" (from "The Story Behind Afro-Netizen" on the site).
  • La Shawn Barber’s Corner
    Description: A conservative, Christian, Africa-American woman blogging on politics and recent news, Barber started writing opinion pieces after finding sobriety and faith in Jesus Christ. From the site’s "About" page: "I’m a freelance writer (and blogger) with articles, book reviews, columns and essays published in print…My work also appears online in Jewish World Review, Townhall.com and other sites. My bi-weekly political column is published on GOPUSA, MichNews.com, Grace-Centered Magazine, TheRightReport.com, American Daily and other sites."
  • Politopics
    Description: Angela Winters is a Washington D.C. African-American freelance writer who is a self-proclaimed centrist in her political views. Her blog often provides interesting perspectives and provides numerous links to others news and political sites/blogs, African-American and otherwise.
  • Anderson@Large
    Description: A writer, public policy consultant, and online political commentator (blogging before blogging had a name for PoliticallyBlack.com), Faye Anderson is a Chicago, African-American, Republican woman covering political news in this blog. She created a documentary on the U.S. Presidential Election debacle of 2004, and she is not hard right in her views.
  • In Hoc Signo Vinces
    Description: Whether they are extreme or unapologetic, bloggers Max and Liz Goss are certainly conservative. Their blog provides their views on recent news and on causes close to their heart, often showcasing submissions from visitors to their site.
  • Right Reason: the weblog for philosophical conservatism
    Description: From the first post on the site: "This site is dedicated to philosophical explorations of moral, cultural, and political conservatism. The contributors are a diverse bunch, but all are committed to challenging the liberalism regnant among intellectuals and to giving conservative principles a careful, powerful, philosophical defense. On this blog you will find philosophical examinations of topical issues like abortion, welfare, and terrorism, broad subjects like human dignity, private property, and just war, and even broader themes like the nature of persons, the concept of rights, and the foundations of moral theory. We hope you will find much here to provoke, stimulate, and inform. As philosophers, we welcome vigorous, reasoned debate. Strong disagreement is par for the course, though we aim to preserve an atmosphere of civility. Comments are and always will be enabled. Please join in the discussion!"
  • Outside the Beltway
    Description: Ostensibly outside Washington D.C.’s I-495 and so in touch with the common man as opposed to the politicians in the U.S. capital, James Joyner started this blog by himself in 2003 and has become successful enough now to have a number of permanent contributors. Joyner is a decorated veteran of Operation Desert Storm and now works as "a management analyst at International Development Resources, Inc., a Washington, D.C. area defense contractor and works at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) in Falls Church, Virginia." This blog champions conservative views and approaches recent political news and events decidedly from the Right.
  • Rossputin.com: Rational Thinking About Our World
    Ross Kaminsky’s Libertarian blog. From the website: "Current events, politics, economics, Social Security reform, School Choice, financial markets, philosophy and more, with an emphasis on free minds, free markets, and free people."
  • The Annotated New York Times
    Description: From the site’s "Learn More" page: "The Annotated New York Times tracks blog postings that cite articles published by The New York Times. These blog fragments are grouped by author or by topic to form virtual, distributed conversations that span multiple sites and that center around the coverage of news events as reported by the Times."
  • White House Briefing - by Dan Froomkin - at washingtonpost.com
    Description: A special column on the washingtonpost.com providing one reporter's (Dan Froomkin's) daily view on what's happening in the West Wing or with the people who work there as reported by selected major newspapers, periodicals, web sites, and blogs. Free registration required.
  • Gadflyer
    Description: Left-leaning Gadflyer provides some very well-thought out editorial pieces from professional journalists from various major cities. The site actually seems to be two blogs - one collaborative blog and a blog from a single contributor.
  • MyDD
    Description: While the fact-checking ("Due Diligence") done on this blog definitely does have a liberal bias (or an impetus, at least), Jerome Armstrong always shows where he gets his numbers and news, and visitors also enjoy more site-searching capabilities available than the average blog makes available.
  • RealClearPolitics
    Description: Arguably better than an RSS news feed, this blog provides daily links to selected headlines, columns, editorials from major news and print publication websites, results of the latest polls, as well as news-related talk show transcripts.
  • TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime
    Description: Jeralyn Merritt, a criminal defense lawyer practicing in and around Denver, created this blog as a companion to his CrimeLynx site. Both sites are intended to be criminal law resources, but the blog’s purpose is to provide coverage from a liberal angle on crime and crime-related political news.
  • Drudge Report
    Description: Earning a great deal of notoriety for revealing that Newsweek had initially abandoned the story about President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, journalist Matthew Drudge’s site is a potpourri of the latest headlines and gossip collected from various news sites.
  • Instapundit
    Description: University of Tennessee law professor Glen Reynolds’s greatly imitated and widely read political weblog (He’s sometimes known as the BlogFather.) While he says he is primarily interested in the overlap between personal freedom and advanced technology, his blog often dissects journalistic coverage and comments on the increasingly blurry line between politics and journalism. He is generally critical of those on the left, but that may be simplifying his stance somewhat.
  • The Note - ABC News’ The Note: First Source for Political News
    Description: Perhaps not the same breed but definitely the same species as a weblog, The Note summarizes the morning news, i.e., it provides commentary, notification, and weblinks on the news that TV’s ABC New’s Political Unit, a group of news producers and researchers, thinks people should know about that morning.
  • andrewsullivan.com
    Description: One of the more well-known blogs, Andrew Sullivan is neither on the right or the left of the political landscape and often has a surprising and/or refreshing viewpoint on the matters of the day. His readers often do too. Sullivan has been a contributing writer and columnist for New York Times Magazine and a columnist for the Sunday Times of London.
  • Citizen Smash - The Indepundit
    Description: Lieutenant Smash (a pseudonym) has been blogging (at least) since he was recalled to active duty and deployed to Kuwait in 2002. He’s been Citizen Smash for a while now, but he still follows the war on terrorism intently, providing a great list of military blogs. The best description of his political stance is independent and pro-military; he seems to lean conservative on many issues, but he is a registered democrat.
  • Vodkapundit
    Description: The best category for this blog is politics, but Stephen Green’s blog is as likely to point out something cool (possibly crude) on the web as it is to discuss the president’s changes to his cabinet. Reading the blog is a bit like having a conversation in a bar (as the title may indicate), but Green frequently airs some interesting political opinions, his and those he’s read about.
  • Talking Points Memo
    Description: Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington columnist for The Hill and a contributing writer Washington Monthly, blogs about politics from a liberal point of view.
  • Wonkette
    Description: Imagine politics and the news had to face the type of scrutiny and scathing sarcasm that the average teenager faces from their sneering, sardonic gossip-mongering peers. And isn’t there always one girl better at it than anybody else? Well, Wonkette, a.ka. Ana Marie Cox, is that girl and has been doing that to Washington politics and news since, well, at least 2003. Left-leaning yet politically incorrect, it’s a cruder yet smarter version of The Daily Show, providing with derision the latest Washington news and gossip.
  • Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
    Description: Goddard’s pieces have appeared in major newspapers across the country, and he has written a widely acclaimed how-to guide for political novices who have been elected but have never served before in that office. His blog provides commentary on political news and gossip.
  • The Decembrist
    Description: Former Washington speechwriter, policy directory (for Senator Bill Bradley), and self-professed liberal frequently mistaken as a conservative, Mark Schmitt provides some of the most interesting political analysis you can find. The title of the blog is a Russian history allusion adopted because Schmitt likes the idea "of liberalism thriving in dark times."
  • PoliBlog
    Description: An associate professor of Political Science at Alabama’s Troy University, Steven Taylor provides news and humorous conservative-slanted commentary.
  • OxBlog
    Description: Blog providing news and a lot of commentary and political analysis from three semi-recent Oxford University grad students: Josh Chafetz, a law student at Yale, and David Adesnik and Patrick Belton, two grad students in international relations at Oxford. Funny, brilliant, and usually with interesting digressions.
  • Political Animal - the blog for Washington Monthly
    Description: Formerly writing for his own blog, Calpundit, Kevin Drum now gives his liberal perspective on politics and culture at Washington Monthly’s website.
  • Kausfiles - a mostly political weblog - hosted by Slate
    Description: Mickey Kaus reads, links, and responds to many other political bloggers and online news pieces. He also has great bumper-sticker, one-liner descriptions of some of the most popular blogs out there.
  • Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.
    Description: The site is an extremely influential liberal weblog managed by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, as a part of his political consulting firm. Around 100,000 people visit his site per day.
  • Eschaton
    Descripton: Probably the best-known of the progressive election/politics blogs, written with short, snappy, often highly sarcastic entries by Duncan Black, a.k.a. Atrios.
  • CJR Daily
    Description: The Columbia Journalism Review Campaign Desk site is a nonpartisan blog tracking media coverage.
  • The Corner on National Review Online
    Description: Popular multi-author blog covering politics from a conservative perspective, put together by the staff of the National Review Online.
  • Little Green Footballs
    Description: A popular blog by Charles Johnson, a California web designer, who covers politics from a not liberal perspective.
  • Election Blogs
    • blog for america - Howard Dean’s blog
      Description: More a historic landmark (or net-mark, we guess) than an important political blog now, Howard Dean’s website basically introduced blogging to the American public and will most likely go down in history as a shaping force in campaign politics for the 2004 presidential elections. Rather than Dean for America, this blog is now known as Blog for America, and it is still being updated.
    • Electablog - Campaign News with all the Carbs
      Description: Blogging before they had a name for it, San Franciscan Dave Pell is a little more down-to-earth than the average political blogger. He describes himself as a "centrist Democrat," and his blog provides commentary on the latest political news.
    • WatchBlog - 2004 U.S. Election News &Opinion
      Description: A "watch blog" is a blog created to correct errors or bias in online news sites. WatchBlog’s numerous editors/bloggers identify themselves as Democrat, Republican, or "Third Party & Independents." Each provides "news, opinion and commentary for the 2004 election" from one of these three viewpoints.
    • Who Was Blogging the Democratic National Convention (in July 2004)?
      Description: Cyberjournalist.net provides a list of people credentialed as bloggers in attendance at the DNC. A good list of important political bloggers.
    • Who Was Blogging the GOP Convention (in August 2004)?
      Description: Cyberjournalist.net provides a list of people credentialed as bloggers in attendance at the RNC. A good list of important political bloggers. This sounds so familiar.
    • Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck
      Description: Nonpartisan blog tracking the presidential race, with focus on checking and analyzing validity of campaign claims and political spin. Vice President Cheney made passing reference to what he thought was this site during the October 5 vice presidential debate.
    • Times on the Trail
      Description: Once regularly updated New York Times features from the campaign trail written by various reporters in a more informal blog-like style than most of the paper’s regular campaign reportage.
    • Unofficial Vote4Nader Blog
      Description: For those who are looking to buck the system, here is the Unofficial Nader Blog, promoting the most well-known of the independent candidates. And it’s still being updated frequently despite the election being over.
    • Election Law
      Description: Rick Hasen is a Professor of Law and is nationally known for his expertise in election law and campaign finance regulation. He shares this expertise in his blog covering and commenting on news and events related to these issues.
    • Election Central
      Description: Warren Slocum, the author of this blog that is generally about the e- voting controversy, is the Chief Elections Officer &County Clerk-Recorder-Assessor for San Mateo County, California, where his exemplary reforms in elections and vote counting have gained him national recognition by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, MSNC, and CNET.
    • Blogs for Bush
      Description: A collaborative blog dedicated to helping George W. Bush get reelected in 2004. Provides a "Blogroll for Bush," a listing of Bush-supported weblogs, and the latest news with commentary as provided by a number of bloggers in favor of re-electing President Bush.
    • The Blogging of the President: 2004
      Description: Offers resources related to the election campaign, politics, and blogging as well as the archive to a National Public Radio (NPR) show on the interplay of the three.

Popular Culture Blogs

  • Gawker
    Description: This collaborative blog is basically a New York gossip column, but it often has good but trendy media and media industry news. Snide and more than a little crude, though, it bears the traits of being published by Nick Denton’s Gawker Media.
  • HipClicks
    Description: From the USA Today website, Whitney Matheson, the writer of USA Today’s weekly entertainment column, "Pop Candy," provides not only the latest in mainstream entertainment news and websites but also a little bit of cattiness so you can laugh at the celebrities you constantly obsess over.
  • Rocketboom
    Description: From the "about" page: "Rocketboom is a three minute daily videoblog based in New York City. We cover and create a wide range of information and commentary from top news stories to quirky internet culture. Agenda includes releasing each new clip at 9am EST, Monday through Friday. With a heavy emphasis on international arts, technology and weblog drama, Rocketboom is presented via online video and widely distributed through RSS."
  • lost remote
    Description: From the "ABOUT US" page: "Lost Remote takes issue with the status quo of television. Technology is changing fast, and a new generation of TV viewers is demanding more. From TiVo to TV websites, we do our best to keep you ahead of the curve. Every day, Lost Remote’s bloggers scour the planet for the latest trends in TV and new media. Every Thursday, we send out an email newsletter with the week’s highlights. No wonder thousands of forward-thinking media execs depend on Lost Remote for fresh ideas and promising TV trends. Oh, and everything’s free."

Sports Blogs

  • Off Wing Opinion
    Description: A speech writer and freelance writer, southpaw Eric McErlain has also played ice hockey since he was seven, usually on the right wing side of the ice rather than the left wing side where lefties are usually assigned. Hence, the original catchphrase for his blog was "a right wing blogger with a left-handed shot." Meaning? McErlain accepts that sports is a business and tries to find the happy mean between zealous fan and jaded cynic. FYI, the blog covers and discusses all sports and sports news, not just hockey nor is he major Red Weings fan.
  • Fanblogs.com
    Description: A place to rant and read rants if you love college football (and, it seems, beer) created by Pete Holliday and Kevin Donahue. The site’s numerous contributors cover and comment on all the conferences with all the insider pop culture references you would expect from college alumni.
  • Bob Reno’s BadJocks.com - Where COPS meets SPORTSCENTER
    Description: The title semi-describes the site. If it’s at all crime- AND sports-related, you will find it here. Where the site’s title falls short is that COPS never provided contact information (here, links) to criminal lawyers, jokingly or otherwise.
  • Sports Law Blog
    Description: Two law students and sports fans discuss sports from a legal perspective.
  • Replacement Level Yankees Weblog
    Description: What is great about this blog if you are not a Yankee fan are the links to so many other baseball team and sports blogs provided. If you are a Yankee fan, the blog offers Yankee scores, news, stats, and discussion.
  • The Sports Economist
    Description: Raymond Sauer, economics professor at Clemson University, discusses the economic side of sports in this blog.
  • Sports Blog :: All Sports, All Blogs, All the Time
    Description: Collects the RSS feeds from blog sites that have registered with Sports Blog and then checks those sites for updates, categorizing the sites and their entries by sport and team.
  • SportsFilter
    Description: Mimicking MetaFilter, SportsFilter is the first sports community weblog. Here, anyone can contribute a link or comment on one as long as it is sports-related.
  • Baseball Crank
    Description: Baseball, law, and politics from a conservative-slanted, baseball fan. You can choose to view only the posts with baseball content.
  • Baseball Blogs All Baseball, All Blogs, All The Time
    Description: GET RiD of this LINK!!!
  • NBA Blog Squad - NBA.com Blog
    Description: Possibly a mod squad reference, this directory of blogs is hosted by the NBA and features insiders, reporters, and fans (who are usually famous).
  • DHFG covering Small College Football
    Description: This blog is part of Don Hansen’s Football Gazetter site, the homepage for this weekly periodical covering Small College Football, i.e., college football involving teams outside the major conferences (so NCAA 1-AA & Mid Major, Division II & Mid Major, Division III, NAIA, and NCCAA). The magazine’s been around since 1986, Hansen has been covering college football for 25 years, and the blog’s been around since October of 2003.
  • BeyondTheScore.com
    Description: Philip Pilmar recently started this blog site about the business side of sports.

Science, Computers, and Electronic Apparatus and Appliances Blogs

  • Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ): Blogs and more
    Description: From the site: "Following are some web sites that SEJ members have recommended as useful to any journalist covering environmental issues. Some are blogs, some forums, others news sites or feeds."
  • W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security et al.
    Description: From the website: "With a goal of ’making homeland security everyone’s business,’ Stephenson Strategies’ W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security strategies, emphasizing empowering the public, creative use of technology, win-win public/private collaborations yielding security and economic benefits, and protecting civil liberties. CIO.com says: ’Google "homeland security blog" and security consultant W. David Stephenson’s site tops the list. If you like blogs… updated nearly every day, Stephenson’s your man, providing links and analysis of current homeland security topics.’"
  • SOSIG Subject News Blog
    Description: The Social Science Information Gateway maintains a blog regarding research resources for the Social Sciences. Here is the official description of the blog: "SOSIG Subject News is a blog that highlights the latest Internet resources for the Social Science academic community. Topical in focus, SOSIG Subject News links to the research sites behind the latest news stories, including Government publications, research reports and existing key resources. Users can view entries by subject whether it is Education, Politics or Business and Management, giving 17 blogs in one and all are available via RSS."
  • Laptopical
    Description: From the site’s "About the Laptops Weblog" web page: "Laptopical - The Laptops Weblog, is brought to you by ’Pens for hire’ - Ian Bandy, Lucy Layman, and ’The Editor’- three freelance journalists. Their sterling work regularly appears in illustrious journals such as ’Blogger’s weekly’, ’Who?.....Never heard of them!’ and ’Sir not appearing at this newsagents’. Their aim is to make Laptopical THE place to read the latest news, views and reviews about laptop computers"
  • engadget
    Description: From the site’s "about" web page: "Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics. Engadget was launched in March of 2004 in partnership with The Weblogs, Inc. Network (WIN)."
  • beSpacific.com
    Description: From the site’s "about" web page: "beSpacific focuses on the expanding resources in the public and private sector related to law and technology news. Daily postings provide updates on issues including copyright, privacy, censorship, the Patriot Act, ID theft, and freedom of information…Sabrina I. Pacifici has been an active member of the online legal community for many years. She created the webzine LLRX.com in 1996 and is the site’s owner, editor, publisher and web manager. She created the journal PLL Perspectives in 1989, and served as its only editor and publisher until 1996. Sabrina has authored many articles on legal technology topics delivered numerous presentations at professional conferences nationwide, and has been a law firm librarian in Washington, DC for 25 years, the past 20 with a global 50 law firm. She is the web manager of the firm’s cyberlaw site and firmwide research intranet, authors in-house blogs, and provides research and practice technology services."
  • Amy Wohl
    Description: From the "About" page: "Amy Wohl has been observing,analyzing, and writing about the information industry for more than 25 years. An economist by training, she focuses on how new technologies become products and markets are created around them. Wohl has provided consulting to nearly every large computer systems and software company and hundreds of small ones, mainly about marketing strategy, positioning, messaging, business and pricing models, and how to educate new markets. She is especially well known for her candid writing and her on-target speeches. She publishes this weblog and a weekly newsletter, Amy D. Wohl’s Opinions . This weblog focuses on the trends, friends, and trivia Amy finds in her journey through the web. Only a few things can fit into the newsletter each week. Much more demands sharing. This is its place. Contact her at this site or at amy@wohl.com. Since readers occasionally ask, "wohl" is pronounced as either "wall" or as "woel" (with a long o). It is actually a German word meaning wellness."
  • T1 Rex’s Business Telecom Explainer
    Description: From the web site: "A companion site to T1Rex.com, here’s where you’ll find easy to understand information about complex telecommunications and networking technology. T1 Rex explains how T1 lines work, VoIP telephone, PBX, virtual private networks, digital audio transport, WiFi &WiMax, fiber optic carriers and other business telecom services. Written by John Shepler."
  • The Doc Searls Weblog
    Description: An established tech weblog that can be racy but that offers a wonderful collection of links for anyone wanting to see what the latest events and discussions in the tech world are. Searls is Senior Editor for the Linux Journal, has written for Omni, Wired, PC Magazine, and other leading tech magazines.
  • Joi Ito Web
    Description: Joi Ito has been jumping on grenades in the tech boom since it all started in the 1990s. He is the founder and CEO of Neoteny Co, a venture capital firm that has set up and run some of the largest web sites in Japan. He is constantly talking about the advantages and potential of blogs in interviews by NPR, CNN, and lectures around the world. His blog can cover many different topics. It is often technology related, but he also discusses news items or simply what he’s doing that day.
  • Science Blog
    Description: Science Blog provides a space for scientists or science-minded individuals to post articles and in effect blog without actually having a blog site of their own. Many articles on a range of topics are provided here. Ben Sullivan, the editor, frequently posts articles from well-respected scientific journals and magazines here, providing some of the latest news from the scientific community.
  • Corante
    Description: Corante is host to numerous blogs and provides daily news digests about science, technology, and the science and technology industry. Probably the best place to start when looking for science-related blogs.
  • WorldChanging: Another World Is Here
    Description: This blog is dedicated to connecting individuals who have had success working in diverse fields creating technology likely to be beneficial to the world and to informing the rest of us about these breakthroughs. The site also focuses simply on how to facilitate collaboration and cooperation in the world of science and technology.
  • SciScoop
    Description: A forum for science and science fiction news and discussion dedicated to becoming the number one online community for those interested or involved in these two areas. The site provides reviews of both science articles and science fiction.
  • Gizmodo
    Description: Snide and a little crude, so obviously published by Nick Denton’s Gawker media, Gizmodo provides reviews of the latest electronic consumer goods. The more gimmicky the product, the more snide the review.
  • ScriptingNews
    Description: The oldest weblog that is still running, ScriptingNews was started by Dave Winer, a major figure in the tech (especially blogging and RSS newsfeed) world. ScriptingNews provides news, a little commentary, and a little glimpse into the world of Winer. One of the most important tech blogs on the net.
  • Google Blog
    Description: Google’s official blog about itself and life inside the Googleplex.
  • ITtoolbox Blogs
    Description: ITtoolbox is a website offering a knowledge base to all the segments of the IT industry, offering tech support, vendor solution evaluations, industry research, industry news, and career support. This site is a directory of blogs hosted by ITtoolbox that are written by professionals in various segments of the IT industry.
  • GROKLAW
    Description: Pamela Jones, editor of this blog, is a journalist with paralegal background who fell into learning IT and then fell in love with it and with open source software. When SCO, the makers of Unix, filed its lawsuit against GNU\Linux, Jones began to follow all the developments of the case. Now, the blog is a detailed reference resource covering this ongoing, potentially historic case of proprietary software vs. free/open source.
  • java.blogs
    Description: java.blogs collects blogs for people developing Java applications. Java is a computer programming language created by Sun Microsystems.
  • Jon’s Radio
    Description: Jon Udell is lead analyst for InfoWorld Media Group, a company that evaluates IT products for technology experts. His blog discusses current articles, projects, controversies, and events in the technology, especially those he is involved in.
  • kuro5hin.org - technology and culture, from the trenches
    Description: Named after Rusty Foster (kuro5hin = corrosion), one of the founders of the site and creators of the technology behind it, the site allows people to contribute stories about science/technology, culture, or how they overlap. Posts are rated by other members of the site. Posts with a low enough rating are automatically removed, but the feature is meant to encourage stimulating commentary or news, which the site generally delivers.
  • LonghornBlogs.com
    Description: While not a Microsoft site, all of LonghornBlogs’s contributors are working on Microsoft’s next OS (operating system), codename Longhorn. The site offers a glimpse into the workings of Microsoft (hardly objective yet surprisingly revealing) and provides news and commentary on the progress of creating this new OS (as well as other projects these bloggers occasionally get shifted to, e.g., Service Pack 2). The site’s mission is to spread the word about Longhorn.
  • Microsoft Employee Blogs
    Description: A blogspace for Microsoft Employees discussing issues, problems, concerns, and news related to working at Microsoft as well as personal musings by employees.
  • Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger
    Description: Microsoft employee Robert Scoble’s covers and comments on tech news, Microsoft and otherwise. His blog is separate from Microsoft.
  • Asterisk*
    Description: Seattle Web designer D. Keith Richardson’s site covers and comments on web design, especially from a "user-centered, standards-based" point of view.
  • Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters
    Description: Probably the number one blog (if not site) for computer-related news, the site was created by Rob Malda ("CmdrTaco") and is now run by him and Jeff Bates ("Hemos). The site posts news from anybody, although the chances of any one person seeing their post appear are slim. Sites that are mentioned at Slashdot can experience the "Slashdot Effect" and have their servers be overwhelmed by new visitors. The name Slashdot was an attempt to make it ext