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Legal blogosphere needs human edited newspaper or magazine

Josh Catone at Read/WriteWeb points out the problem with the majority of the blogosphere being in the long tail. Many good blogs go unread.

Automatic aggregators, like Techmeme, end up acting somewhat like gated communities that are dominated by the biggest blogs — who link to one another and prop each other up. Paid syndication like Blogburst is hit or miss and also favors the more prominent bloggers who have name recognition.

A solution may be Brooklyn based The Issue which Catone describes as aiming ‘to bring the best of the wider blogosphere into focus via a daily, human edited online newspaper that aggregates quality blog content in a single place.’

The Issue is presented with a very clean, newspaper-esque design that organizes content into six main categories: US, world, business, science & health, art & culture, and musings (think: editorials). The paper also highlights a handful of ‘featured stories’ (major headlines) across multiple topic areas, and each day The Issue presents one ‘Issue of the Day,’ which it explores in depth with a handful of insightful posts.

law blog newspaper

We have a nice aggregation of law blog content at Justia’s BlawgSearch and the ABA Journal online. But we’re lacking a human edited vehicle that each day highlights featured stories and hot law blog discussion across various topics and locales.

Such a vehicle would allow us to consume law content at the increasing rate that it’s being produced. Something impossible today. It would also bring exposure to the excellent law blogs far down the longtail.

May take a joint effort of folks to get the job done but it’s necessary and is going to happen.

  • http://blog.simplejustice.us Scott Greenfield

    The idea of a daily blawgreview is terrific, but it would prove a full time job, meaning that somebody would have to foot the bill.

  • http://kevin.lexblog.com Kevin

    Agree Scott that it will require be a full time job. And sophisticated software publishing system.
    Outcome will be valuable resource to legal community and public at large. Though the dotcom days are littered with sites of perceived value that went bust, I’m confident there’s a business model that can make this work.

  • http://bizop.ca michael webster

    Why not simply aggregate individual lawyer’s RSS feeds instead?

  • http://www.myshingle.com Carolyn Elefant

    Over at Legal Blogwatch (www.legalblogwatch.typepad.com), we often attempt to aggregate commentary on important stories – as when the Supreme Court released its sentencing decision, or the recent discussion on Lawyer Depression. I cull through dozens of blogs to find commentary, and surprisingly, there is not as much discussion as one would think. Often, we try to summarize the other links instead of just linking, because people don’t always have time to go to the links.
    There are a couple of problems. First, it’s difficult to figure out when to hit the right point in the news cycle. Blog a story too soon, and there’s not enough commentary. Blog a story too late, and it’s been discussed so pervasively that no one is interested.

  • http://kevin.lexblog.com Kevin

    Aggregating all the lawyer’s feeds is not enough Michael – you’re just left with a lot of stuff, and I mean a lot.
    LexBlog bloggers alone are putting up 70 to 100 posts a day. Multiple that by 5, 10 or 15 to get all the blog content and it’s just impossible to see what’s there, let alone see hot spots in the discussion.

  • http://kevin.lexblog.com Kevin

    Good points Carolyn – Is there enough conversation and, if so how, how does a human editor keep up with highlighting it?
    Though law bloggers, tending to be a little self centered, don’t reference each other’s content and talk about common topics as much as bloggers in other industries, I do think there’s enough conversation to highlight for people. That would be especially true if we had a vehicle to highlight it. It may be that bloggers are discussing the same subject without anyone knowing it. Exposing same, would bring more conversation.
    On the human side Carolyn, you’d need technology to do some of the lifting. It can’t be done with heavy lifting by people alone. Technology identifying discussion by topic, type of publisher, and locale would give an editor like you a head start.

  • http://bizop.ca michael webster

    Kevin; What I meant was if you want to replace technorati, you could so by aggregating just the law blogs. How people then used that platform would be up to them. The aggregation is necessary but not sufficient.
    Carolyn; I don’t think that lawyers are going to provide blow by blow commentary. I could be wrong, but comprehending legal trends doesn’t lend itself to same day reporting. The Becker-Posner blog doesn’t jump on stories daily, for example.

  • http://www.civtrial.com/blog Brooks Schuelke

    On the personal injury front, Eric Turkewitz gave weekly updates of p.i. stories, but recently quit because it was too much work. I’ve tried to take over for him at our blog (civtrial.com/blog), and I will testify that it is a lot of work. I’ll also confirm what Carolyn said that there isn’t a lot of dialogue going back and forth, at least in our field. I try to aggregate different views on stories, but it’s not always easy.

  • http://www.makingthejump.net Karen Eaton

    While an online magazine following legal blog trends and discussions would be great, I don’t think it would necessarily solve the problem of all the great blogs out there that go unread. Human editors, even with the help of technology, can’t follow it all either. I also think there is a tendency in more “formal” media to follow what’s already popular, since this approach is more likely to guarantee readers.
    That being said, there are ways right now that lawyer bloggers can start to add a bit of human editing to the legal blogosphere – through a custom social news site (a combination of aggregation and a small amount of human “editing” through popularity of particular posts). Technology buffs have been doing this for awhile via Digg. To some extent, I’m surprised the idea hasn’t caught on more in other circles — legal blogs seem ideal for this approach.
    The technology is already there to create a custom social news aggregator – via coRank. What would it take for success? Some volunteers to get it going and early adopters who are popular legal bloggers to get the word out.
    The “Digg effect” is a great way for new and less popular blogs to get exposure, and I would love to something like Digg become a part of how we collectively organize the legal blogosphere.

  • http://bizop.ca michael webster

    Karen wrote: “the problem of all the great blogs out there that go unread”
    Blogs may be unread, but if they are really great, the authors will find some other way to make their point.
    Outliers are exactly that: great and not read.