State of the Blogs 2002

The modern Cal Blog, in the 'Cal news and commentary on the news' vein, started last January with Calstuff. It grew quickly, albeit in spurts, between January and about May. Between Angry Clam, CalAnon, and myself, we broke over 20 news stories, killed and resurrected people named Dwight, and collected the ASUC and Daily Cal as regular readers. Angry Clam managed to attract over ten thousand hits in one day, and at peak we were running around 300 for the 'Big Three' with plenty for the other Cal Blogs as well. The Blogs also started to specialize, between political points of view, subject matter, and writing style.

At the time, my dream for the Cal Blogs was to establish them as a partial alternative to the Daily Cal. A loose-knit organization of 15-20 daily-posting blogs, breaking news on a fairly regular basis, and collecting the best in commentary on other news sources. Two or three 'Big Cal Blogs,' probably including Calstuff, would be a clearinghouse linking to all the blogs and working as a sort of Cal Blog Center. This, plus some publicity and word of mouth, would hopefully raise our hit count from 250 a day to over 500, from just insider ASUC/Daily Cal/OGB types to the rest of Cal.

This has not become reality. The Cal Blogs were devastated by summer and Graduations. Around 10 of them either ceased posting or posted very infrequently. CalAnon and Angry Clam, 2 of the three biggest, either stopped or moved away. Even those who still post largely post on National or ideological topics; certainly fine, but I can get posts of those types on the big nationwide Blogs like Instapundit or Volokh. They just don't interest me, and they're certainly not a new media type or anything.

Hits have stagnated, at least for me, around 200/day on weekdays. Few of the Cal Blogs are breaking stories, with the major exceptions of CalWatch and ProgCal. (Probably some others I'm forgetting, too.) In all, the Blog scene is in equilibrium. Steady readership, focuses, and posting rhythms. Fine, but not really growing.

This isn't to say there aren't bright spots. Comment systems have proven to be fun and informative. There are new, interesting Bloggers: ProgCal returned, CalWatch posts steadily, and Beetle Beat has become a must-read for any Blog Fan. There's others.

And this is mainly a bad thing just to me. I want more hits. I want to actually affect the Daily Cal's style book, instead of just shouting from the sidelines. But I think it's worth a shot for being useful and well-read by students. It's free, moderately brings students together in the 'we're all reading the same thing' sense, and is an easy meritocratic way for new writers to make their name in the Cal scene. I like to think the potential to break stories and make the ASUC/Daily Cal accountable to someone is there.

But the question is: how? Word of Mouth just isn't doing the job. Building Cal Blogs will require publicity, organization, money, and time.. things that Blogging is either bad at or that I just can't raise. And how to recruit? I managed to find 1 new guy through all of Welcome Week.

It's worth a shot. Nobody else is doing what we do.

More on how to build Cal Blogs later.




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