Bloggy Cleveland

Thanks to Jim Vickers of Cleveland Magazine for including us in a fine article called “Hot Blogs,” which examines the concept of blogging and several Cleveland area blogs, including Dawn’s:

www.dawnolsen.com Blogger: Dawn Olsen
Content: The wife of wp.blogcritics.org founder Eric Olsen, Dawn has been writing her “Up Yours … And Other Helpful Tips” blog since April 2002. Her entries are at times strikingly personal; other times offbeat and humorous. Recent topics have included “Reflections on Poverty” and “Is My Kid a Jesus Freak?”

Excerpt: Sept. 18, 2003: “Lately Lily has been fascinated by the concept of God. Who can blame her, at that age it’s like Harry Potter, all magic and excitement. I think I remember feeling the same when I was a kid, albeit a little more confused when my mom threw the whole Jewish heritage in the mix.”

He uses my experiences as a door into blogging – I am flattered:

While researching a book about the role the Internet played in post-Sept. 11 communication, Eric Olsen kept running into the words “blog” and “Weblog” – hip names for online journals where tech-savvy people record their thoughts and opinions. It wasn’t long before Olsen had shelved the book idea and jumped aboard the fledgling blog bandwagon himself. Nearly two years later, Olsen’s wp.blogcritics.org site features writing by more than 370 people on topics ranging from pop music to politics. It sees as many as 25,000 visitors a day and has been covered by such mainstream media as The New York Times, Forbes and National Public Radio.

Also covered are Melinda Urick, Derek Hess, and Todd Emery.

Obviously there are dozens of noteworthy Cleveland bloggers left out, which is partially remedied with a reference to Cleveland.com’s area weblog list.

I realize it’s a “rival” publication, but I wish the article would have more directly mentioned the very fine Cleveland.com blogs themselves, including my own Cleve-Blog, but if everything was perfect, I’d haved nothing left to complain about.