I’ll admit it, I’m vain. I check my logs regularly and scour the Internet looking for people who are talking about me. I get giddy when other blogs (no matter how insignificant) link to mine, and even giddier when it’s praised by people more important than me.
This week Nicolas Cossette of the Montreal Social Media blog put mine in a list of seven important local blogs. It’s a very subjective list, and it doesn’t include some smaller but very interesting blogs about Montreal, but still yay me.
Included with the entry on me is this statement:
I would say that if (traditional) journalism has difficulties to reach a younger audience, that’s partly because of blogs like his where you can find all the news about the city plus a lot more.
There’s this idea a lot of people have that my blog (and/or others) serves as a replacement for newspapers. There’s two reasons why I disagree with this:
- This is not the place to get your news. I see a truckload of interesting news that I don’t post about because I have nothing interesting to add. Kate’s Montreal City Weblog does a much better job covering the local news, but then it’s just news about Montreal. These blogs are great sources of information, but they should be used in tandem with newspapers, not instead of them.
- The primary sources for information from both my blog and especially Kate’s are local newspapers. Without them, we wouldn’t know half the stuff we do, and those links we put in our posts to read the full stories would go nowhere. It’s amazing how much people forget this sometimes.
Speaking of Kate’s blog, every month she’s consistently one of my top two referrers (traffic that comes to my blog through links from other websites). The other is Patrick Lagacé. Both have me on their blogrolls and link to me occasionally.
But when Patrick links to my blog in one of his posts, I have to pray my cheap server doesn’t fail it dwarfs all my regular traffic with a flood of curious French-speaking people (who apparently all take one look at my blog and close it). So I’m expecting something similar this month as he linked to me in two consecutive posts.
The first calls Fagstein the best media blog in the city (thank you) in an unrelated post about some silly criticism of him. (Despite how vain I am, I’ve developed a pretty thick skin when it comes to criticism. Most of it is brainless loudmouthing, which should be dismissed. The rest is useful criticism which should be embraced.)
So yeah, I’m awesome.
“and even giddier when it’s praised by people more important than me.”
C’mon now – more important than you?
Kate’s blog is a very powerful news source that is updated from both French and English media which I think makes it the most important English blog in the city.
I think your blog works very well with it because you write a lot on things, such as technology, that are not necessarily front page items. Plus I can comment on Fagstein (:P)
Ooops, forgot to say, yes, you are awesome! Now, get everyone to Link To Me! heh heh
Yeah, realistically, newspaper articles = $$$, blog posts = nada dinero.
Hi Fagstein,
I have linked your blog in my favorite web site links which needs a lot of clean up I admit despite the fact that you blasted my good friend Howard Galganov in a few of your editorials.
Nonetheless, this is how I found your blog the first article I read was “Galganov is still an idiot”. Hey, everyone is entitled to his (her) opinion and just as you say, we can just toss away the bold insults and see what remains underneath which is constructive criticism.
Best regards and long live to your Fagstein blog!!!
Tym Machine
PS: By the way, let me take this line to plug my own “bilingual” blog (hey I’m French so what the heck) where I share opinions mainly on politics: http://www.tymmachine.blogspot.com, like they say in English, rub my back, I’ll scratch yours. I think that it’s how we should be between bloggers, we should be helpful to each others, it’s already hard enough and we’re not making any money at all but hey, we scare the sh*t out of traditional media who are starting to feel the floor sliping under their feet.
Wicked cool. Congrats.
Who the F is Galganov?
Hi Dave,
You might want to read furthermore on Howard Galganov at http://www.galganov.com, he used to be an activist for QPAC but now he has been in Ontario for the past 7 years and now wants to fight for anglo equal rights over there too.
Regards,
Tym Machine
http://www.tymmachine.blogspot.com