The Beatles Of Blogging

by digby

I can’t tell you how delightful it is for me to exhort you to donate to Atrios’s fundraising drive today after all the years he’s so generously supported mine. He’s my blogfather, unfailingly generous to me and other bloggers and the hub around which the liberal blogosphere gathers. He is the ironman of blogging who has done this day in and day out seven days a week for nearly six years, which is the equivalent of working at a regular job for twenty at least. (And he doesn’t appear to have aged a day!) So go, now, give a little to support one of the best bloggers out there.

Waay back in the day, I wrote this about him, when I voted for him for best Blog in the very first Koufax Awards:

Atrios, for consistently having his finger on the pulse. He’s the Beatles of Blogging. It’s spooky the way he sees the trend before anybody else.

Whereas professional online news gathering entities like “The Note” capture the CW of DC and offer reams of information and items of interest, Atrios seems to feel what the wider reaction will be. He hones in on the salient points and brings various spins and takes to his page with a real narrative flair.

His own voice is casual and wholly unpretentious; the blog itself tells the story through the pacing and interaction of the posts, links and commentary of other bloggers and readers. He culls the best of the print and online world, usually linked in a series of short, pointed comments and punctuated by infrequent but incisive longer original pieces until a theme or story reaches critical mass. His blog, rather than simply being a vehicle for commentary serves as a conduit and a clearinghouse for the online liberal zeitgeist.

As true today as it was then.

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