Over on National Review On-line, sometimes inspired and sometimes confused Jonah Goldberg describes the new NRO blog Corner for those unfamiliar with the format:
For those of you who don’t “get it,” here’s what it’s about. Various NR editors and members of our extended family get to comment on anything we like, including each other’s comments. We try to keep the posts short and the most recent appear on top.
There are no editors, no rules, and no master plan. Yes, as many, many, many readers have pointed out, it’s very much like a blog along the lines of AndrewSullivan.com or Instapundit.com. The difference, however, is significant. Those guys run one-man operations. If you can’t see the distinction, look at it this way. Sex with one person is very different than sex with more than one.
Someone needs to spank that boy with a rolled up copy of National Review and set him straight on a few things: Firstly “Corner” is not “very much like a blog”… it is a blog. Secondly, it is bad form not to link to Andrew Sullivan and Instapundit if you are going to mention them. We are not competitors, Jonah, we are actually a resource for each other and “Corner” is no different. Unlike dead tree media, which is chasing the same dollar, cross links actually feed readers at the people we comment on and visa versa. In fact, the more of us there are and the more cross links there are, the more readers we all get by virtue of the increased content and broader catchment… people who might not be seen dead with a copy of NR or ever think of typing www.nationalreview.com (i.e. quite a few libertarians) might nevertheless follow a link they find here to NRO just to see what we are talking about, which is surely what NRO would want.
Bitching aside, “Corner” is actually quite a fun blog. We are glad they liked our multi-contributor format so much that they copied it. It is even nicer to know that when Jonah thinks about blogs, he thinks about sex. I’d like to think we can take credit for that too.
We are of course well aware that the cognoscenti like Jonah only come to Samizdata for Natalija’s “go for the throat” articles.
