Le Blog et Moi

Anxious about the feature article on local bloggers in today's Southern Illinoisan when I went to bed last night, I woke up before dawn to an interview on NPR of a French blogger who was speaking my language.

A cup of capaccino later I found the interview here: Why is Le Blog so popular in France?:

"In France blogging has exploded in the past few months. The French blog community, or blogosphere, [is] the second largest in the world behind the US. But it was a podcast interview of French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy with blogger Loic Le Meur just before Christmas that caused a cyberspace sensation in France. It was the first blogger podcast interview with a major French political leader and it has the French mainstream media and political establishment looking on with interest and perhaps with some envy." (boldface added)

Since the newspaper was delivered to my doorstep this morning, I've glanced at the article in The Southern, but haven't read it. The title and the graphic turned me off:

"Everyone's Talking About Blogs: Locals Jump onto the Weblog bandwagon"

The only locals jumping on the blogging bandwagon is the The Southern Illinoisan! The bloggers featured in the article have been doing so for a combined total of six years. Odd that the recently-started (bandwagon-hopping?) blogs by The Southern's own reporters Jim Muir and Paul Klee were not mentioned in the article.

The story graphic features half of a large female face with a wide-open mouth sticking out of a computer screen -- framed by a wooden-looking rectangle. Photos of the bloggers at their computers, or screen shots of their web blogs might have been better. As a blogger, I could have accomplished that in a single afternoon, while the newspaper had a week and a staff photographer, but only came up with tiny head shots of Sheila Simon, Tom Leverett and me. Borrring.

Loic Le Meur's blog gets about 200 comments per day; Guy Degen's 23-minute interview of Le Meur should be inspiring to bloggers everywhere. If you want listen, it's at dw-world.de

I won't be reading The Southern article in print, since I'd get too involved trying to improve it - a waste of time for the "carved in stoneness" of the medium. And it's not available at the Southern's online "Life" page -- nothing is! Instead, I'll upload the .mp3 files from the first podcast interview of a major Carbondale political leader, with a tip of the chapeau to Loic Le Meur.

If any readers have been inspired to start their own blogs after reading the Southern, Le Meur, or me, send a link to dispatch@shawneenet.net, si vous plait.