That's right, kiddies. While following up on my last post here I saw a curious legend at the top of the page that said "Online Exlusives". Surely this must be some trick. OW makes their money from PRINT, what is an online exclusive to a print 'zine? Apparently they call it Bloggytown, and they have contributors like Jessica (no last name), Jeffrey Billman, Billy Manes and Bob Whitby to name a few. There is no announcement of the puropse of the blog, no tagline (though there is a dedicated RSS feed of some kind).
Hell, I'll subscribe to any feed for a few days, but I'm not sure what I'm getting. Why would a regular Joe want to take time out of his busy day to go over to this blog. It certainly isn't A-list enough to get its own site design, URL or even anything more than a header graphic, so why do I need to subscribe to this? What's going on in the blog that I can't get in the pages of the Weekly, and if it's that good, why doesn't it make it in there in the first place?
There's a perfectly good explanation, but I'm not sure these kids know what the reason is or that they could really say it yet. They've been doing this since at least my birthday this year (as their very pretty and oh-so-usable archive thingie tells us), which is July 18th for the curious.
Plus: they were right on top of Kerry's presidential announcement, with video (something you can't get in print).
Minus: There is no way to separate out posts by individual authors. All the posts on the first page are from the last two days or so, and may I remind you of the wonky archive again?
I thought one of the points of a newspaper or magazine was to hear from a journalist's perspective, and especially a blog on a MSM publication's website. However, there is no way to know who is writing the post until after you've read it! Perplexing...
Sorry to rant and rave so much, but this whole OW blog thing just has me in a tizzy (if I can use such a word).