Just when Arti is wondering how to spend the next 48 hours before Sunday’s Academy Awards, an incoming link pops up on her dashboard. It is a blog talking about Time’s recent selection of 25 Best Blogs for 2009. A stroke of glamour no less than the golden Oscar flashes across Arti’s muddled mind… huh, Ripple Effects got linked to what? The researcher in Arti quickly heeds the call to check it out. No, Ripple Effects is not on the list. Slap, slap, wake up, this is the real world now… it’s just that one of Ripple Effects’ posts got linked by WordPress’ auto-generated linking mechanism. In the huge blogosphere out there, being chosen as one of the top 25 blogs is just got to be harder than winning the Oscars. What am I thinking.
For those interested in the curious case of Time’s 25 Best Blogs of 2009, here is the list and the subject matter of the blogs:
- Talk Points Memo — Political
- The Huffington Post — Political
- Lifehacker — “Tips and downloads”
- Metafilter — Wikiweblog
- The Daily Dish — Atlantic Andrew Sullivan’s Political blog
- Freakonomics — NY Times Stephen Dubner and Levitt, Economics
- BoingBoing — Technology and fringe culture
- Got2BeGreen — Environment
- Zen Habits — Self-help and motivational
- The Conscience of a Liberal: NY Times Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate, Economics
- Crooks and Liars — Political
- Generación Y — Political
- Mashable — Social Networking
- Slashfood — Food
- The Official Google Blog — Business
- synthesis — opinions & ideas
- bleat — life in retro
- /Film — Films and Video Games
- Seth Godin’s Blog — Marketing
- Deadspin — Sports
- Dooce — Heather Armstrong on a female life
- The Pioneer Woman — Ree Drummond on a female pioneer life
- Said the Gramophone — Music
- Detention Slip — cheat sheet for education news
- Bad Astronomy — in praise of real science
So, here they are, your celebrities, the blockbusters of the blogosphere, some attracting millions of page views per month, the Hollywood Oscar scene of blogging. But I must say I regret to see there are no blogs on the list that are dedicated to the arts or books. Further, hats off to all those who write in obscurity, like many of my favorites. They are the solitary bloggers who quietly express their views towards life’s issues, or share their love of a book, response to a film, or simply capture a moving moment, blogs that deserve to be read just the same as the blockbusters.
Maybe there needs to be an indie blogging recognition, like in the film industry, an Independent Spirit Award for bloggers who write and toil just for the simple pleasure of observing, expressing, sharing, and celebrating the essence of being human. No glamour, no red carpet.
*****
P.S. Ok, they have the red carpet too at the Spirit Awards and glamour automatically comes with that I suppose… Anyway, I’m sure you get my point.
Ripple Effects 
I won an award as the best physician bluegrass fiction writer in the free world. The other guy they nominated was sick and couldn’t come, but it turns out he wasn’t real anyway.
drtombibey.wordpress.com
No matter, I’m sure you’ll agree writing fiction or playing bluegrass is rewarding on its own.
Arti
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Your are right. They both keep me in the doctor game.
Dr. B
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I’m thrilled to find Yoani Sanchez on the list (Generacion Y). Winner of last year’s Ortega y Gasset prize for digital journalism and general gadfly around the Cuban dictatorship, she’s been instrumental in building the blogging community in Cuba as well as communicating with the outside world.
Anyone who doesn’t know her story, should. A google search will produce everything from her blogs (available in Spanish and English) to critical essays about her viewpoint and loving tributes to her as a person.
I must say I was surprised to see that Deadspin is a sports blog. I thought it was dedicated to mystery writing or vampires or something!
Linda,
Yes, I remember reading about Yoani Sanchez and the Cuban people in your blog The Task at Hand. It’s wonderful that TIME recognizes a people’s struggle against tyranny in another country as something equally valuable as domestic politics and the economy. Thanks for drawing our attention to Generación Y.
Arti
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I hope Visual Dialogues will make it to Arti’s 25 Best Blogs one of these days!
Oscars is just a few hours away, trust that you will write about it after the results are out. Thank you Arti, thank you in advance.
Let’s all watch the Live Broadcast from every corner of the world. Have fun all the dear bloggers out there. Enjoy!
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