todays Ask Tony is dedicated to Danny Federici

an original member of the E Street Band. he died yesterday at 58. Federici and original E Street drummer, Vini Lopez invited Bruce Springsteen to join their band.

curtis asks, Did you see that study which found that newspaper blogs failed to increase public dialogue? What are your thoughts? Do you think newspapers are wasting their time creating blogs?

no i hadnt seen the study, which was conducted in 2006, but now that i have, i think that journalism professors are wasting their time creating studies to diss blogging. particularly in regard to newspaper blogs.

2006 wasnt the greatest year for newspaper blogs, so the study is flawed right there. whats also wrong is trying to pretend like the number of comments on a post means anything in regard to anything. but thats the kind of thinking that you get when you have journalism profs trying to measure how good a blog post is.

last week we at the Times had a post that got over 2,000 comments. yesterday we had one that got over 500 in less than 12 hours. the kareem abdul-jabbar blog is close to 1000 comments despite only being around for a little more than 7 weeks. meanwhile our Lakers blog gets thousands of comments a week.

does that mean that we should “give up” on our health blog, our metro blog, or our education blogs just because they dont get as many comments? thats like saying that the best way to judge if your bf loves you is by how many bouquets of flowers he sends you, or the best way to judge your gf is by how many times she waltzes around the house in lingerie.

some topics are just easier to get comments, and some topics will never get comments. that doesnt mean that the process of blogging in those verticals is flawed. whats flawed are the judgments based on shit that doesnt matter.

what ive noticed on the busblog is a good, solid post usually gets less comments than an outrageous one. an outrageous Wrong or slightly off-kilter post will get just as many comments as one that is right on the money. but meanwhile your bread-and-butter post that is fair, accurate, and interesting will get far less comments. does that mean that you should only post the outrageousness? of course not.

those profs should leave the blogging analysis to the pros and go back to teaching kids about the inverted triangle.

Grace wonders, “Who do you think is going to win the Stanley Cup? Why?

Can you refer me to an awesome female blog that doesn’t post pictures of themselves with every post?”

Just like my women, I like the Canadians.

As for awesome female blogs that dont post pics of themselves constantly, there are many that I go to every day: xTx, zulekia, and flagrant. i would also say The Pants but she hardly ever writes any more. i also really like sarah of the delicious life who does a really beautiful food blog. and even though its not really about her, Christie St. Hottie does a killer job of telling everyone whats on the web at latimes.com/lulz

barney ponders: Nobel, Pulitzer, or Oscar—pick one.

Oscars are for fakers, Nobel isnt even american, so i would accept the Pulitzer. but only if they give me one for blog editing. and only if i could get a copy of the award to send to the Daily Nexus, which has no J school, no J classes, no adult supervision, and hopefully it will always remain that way

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