by With the closure of Catallaxy, this blog is now pretty much the last remnant of what was once called Ozplogistan – the Australian political blogosphere, which was, for a while, a serious alternative to the political journalism of the mainstream media. There are a couple of partial exceptions. Tim Blair started blogging in 2002, a few months before me, but retreated behind the Telegraph paywall years ago, and now produces nothing but snark in the manner of Andrew Bolt (it was always an element of his blogging, but when he was out on his own he did some good work). Club Troppo is a descendent of Ken Parish’s Troppo Armadillo, after several changes of personnel. These days it alternates between interesting but abstruse essays by Nicholas Gruen and Covid denialism/do
Topics:
John Quiggin considers the following as important: Metablogging
This could be interesting, too:
John Quiggin writes 21 today
John Quiggin writes Obituary for Catallaxy
John Quiggin writes Getting back to blogging
John Quiggin writes Hits and misses
With the closure of Catallaxy, this blog is now pretty much the last remnant of what was once called Ozplogistan – the Australian political blogosphere, which was, for a while, a serious alternative to the political journalism of the mainstream media.
There are a couple of partial exceptions. Tim Blair started blogging in 2002, a few months before me, but retreated behind the Telegraph paywall years ago, and now produces nothing but snark in the manner of Andrew Bolt (it was always an element of his blogging, but when he was out on his own he did some good work).
Club Troppo is a descendent of Ken Parish’s Troppo Armadillo, after several changes of personnel. These days it alternates between interesting but abstruse essays by Nicholas Gruen and Covid denialism/do nothingism from a former colleague of mine.
And that’s about it. Group blogs like Larvatus Prodeo and individual blogs like Tim Dunlop’s Road to Surfdom are long gone. If there are any others left, I’ve lost track of them. Those who haven’t retired altogether have migrated to Twitter, as, to a large extent have I.
Twittter itself is, in many ways, a return to the early days of weblogging – links to interesting material on the web with (necessarily) pithy comments. While that has its appeal, it’s sad to see attempts to recreate long-form blogging, with lengthy linked threads, spoolers and unmanageable strings of comments.
I still have a small but loyal following here and as long as that continues I’ll keep posting. But like Lonesome George I understand I’m the last of my kind.