| With the blogosphere expanding by the hour, it's inevitable that many interesting voices are lost in the clutter. Those who have come in late find it difficult to build a readership regardless of the quality of their writing, since most blog-readers already have a fixed list of sites they visit on a regular basis. Few people have the time or inclination to keep expanding this list. |
| This is one reason why blog consortiums, which bring together and highlight a range of interesting opinions at a one-click stop, are becoming more useful. This is also why high-quality group blogs like Sepia Mutiny (http://sepiamutiny.com/) are immensely popular. |
| Blogcritics (http://blogcritics.org/) is one such group effort, a vast enterprise that cheekily describes itself as "a sinister cabal". It was founded in 2002 by Eric Olsen and Phillip Winn, who continue to maintain it with the aid of a 20-editor team. |
| Though over 1,100 bloggers have written posts for Blogcritics, the site's claim that it is a "filtered microcosm of the blogosphere" is a disputable one since it excludes the personal-journal variety of blogging. "Dear diarists" are not the bloggers who typically contribute to this site. |
| However, Blogcritics has succeeded spectacularly well in what it set out to do: use blogging to bring together "the latest news, opinions, and reviews on music, books, film, TV, popular culture, technology, and politics". |
| Today, the site is a respected information source "� officially recognised by Google News and My Yahoo! "� and it syndicates content to online editions of newspapers around the US via the Advance family of websites. |
| Publishers and music companies send review copies of their new releases to Blogcritics, just as they do with other media. An archive of over 37,000 pieces has been built up, with many articles spinning off into interesting conversations (via the comments section). There are even press releases. |
| One of the reasons I'm talking about Blogcritics this week is that it now has an Asian subsidiary "� Desicritics (http://desicritics.org/), which was launched on January 26 with dozens of bloggers contributing to it. "The bringing together of so many different voices and perspectives from across South Asia is the value of this site," says Aaman Lamba, a Blogcritics editor and one of the initiators of Desicritics. |
| I'm one of the many bloggers to join this new "cabal" "� which will mean a lot of cross-posting, since I don't have the time to write fresh content for two websites in addition to the work I get paid for. |
| Already, the new site looks very good, featuring some fine pieces (including exclusive interviews and previews) by the cream of the desi blogosphere. I have to admit, the idea of a blog being "edited" and made subject to writer's guidelines makes me a bit uncomfortable. |
| But one way of getting around that is to think of Desicritics (and its parent site) as interactive online magazines, or as more structured forms of blogs. With all the chaos that goes naturally with this medium, a little order never hurts! |
| Jai Arjun Singh, aka Jabberwock, blogs at http://jaiarjun. blogspot. com |
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