March 17, 2004

A blog by any other name...

Christopher L. Filkins

Phil Ringnalda is thinking about author identity versus blog names. I've been thinking about this quite a bit as well. Over the last couple of months I've made it a point to discover the names of the authors behind many of the blogs I read on a regular basis. Aside from Atrios & a few select others I haven't really had a problem. Phil's point is well taken though as the actual identity of the author is not presented at all consistently throughout the blogosphere. Certainly toolmakers put every effort into making this easy as can be for their users but still the entry-point annonymity of most bloggers stays around as an artifact long after they usually "come out" with a given name.

All of this I think brings up an interesting reversal in the blogosphere versus previous print medias. As you may know Kevin Drum started writing for The Washington Monthly (TWM) today. In doing so he is essentially abandoning his previous site and doing all of his subsequent posts (aside from personal ones which are far and between on his site to begin with) under the new moniker of "Political Animal." In my news aggregator I'll be changing his identity to Kevin Drum from Calpundit. Political Animal won't even make the cut. Is the brand of the publication being subsumed by the identity of the author in this blogosphere of ours?

Posted by filchyboy at March 17, 2004 5:00 PM
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