THE OTHER CONTRADICTION TO RUNNING CALSTUFF: it's tricky to have national distribution of what is supposed to be a local blog.

My intention was never to spend most of my time going after the hard Leftists. Not that I don't enjoy the hits it gets me. Those are great. But basically, it's just too easy. The Anti-war groups held another sparsely attended march calling for Bush to choke to death? Yawn. SJP held a protest to call attention to the poor Palestinians? Nothing new to say there, either.

Ultimately, the most interesting stuff at Cal for actual Cal students is the intricate interplay of student government, news sources, the city government, the Administration, etc. It's very convoluted, very fascinating, and an area where I can really write something new. But it's also completely Greek to anyone without a year's education in Berkeley politics. No one else knows, or really cares, about how Student Action's Presidential candidate reacted to today's news story about his campaign tactics. Or an analysis of how the ASUC is fighting the City on redistricting.

So that's 95% of my material. But every so often something big will come along: Sex orgies, or paper stealings, or something else Berkeley-esque that captures national attention. Certainly I'll cover that; watching the national press rely on a lazy Daily Cal staff writer's collection of misquotes and inaccurate references makes me wince. But then the question is: once everyone drifts away from the local stuff, how do I get them onto the important ones?

I think the answer will probably be more important Blogs, such as Instapundit. I send Glenn a quick e-mail with the header 'Nude Rachel Klein Pics!!!' to make sure he reads it quickly. If he decides its newsworthy, its up in five minutes. From there the rest of the blogsphere (I want to call the system the 'Civilsphere,' which I think sounds really cool.) can pick it up if it's useful. From there, a mainstream news source can find it pretty easily.

Echoing Kurtz's idea, seems to me local blogs should be the next big thing. Clearly the market in generalized poliblogs is saturated, and the pecking order has been roughly established. So time for the next level of strata: semi-journalistic, specialized blogs that can go indepth, developing sources and such. Already we can see the development of specializations within the major blogs: Charles Johnson has been focusing increasingly on the Middle East, Joanne Jacobs works school choice, and so on.

Calstuff: setting trends since 2002!
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