A Decade of Drudgery

A Round of Applause for Ann. Cleveland Heights resident Ann Abid, the recently retired librarian at the Cleveland Museum of Art (and one of the most beautiful ladies ever to be eligible for membership in AARP), has joined her husband Roldo Bartimole as a published author. She wrote the introduction for a recently published book on art museum libraries and librarianship. I'm looking forward to tracking it down and reading her prose, which I'm sure will be informed by her encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. But her learning isn't limited to this subject: I'm often staggered to learn how much she knows about just about any subject. I'm blessed to know some well-read people, but few can hold a candle to Ann.

Did You Know the Drudgereport Is Almost Ten Years Old? Time flies when fools are having fun. And I ask you: who's a bigger fool than right-wing web slinger Matt Drudge? Still, I find myself checking his site occasionally, if something less than frequently (I'll never forget my friend Anton Zuiker's shock upon learning I was checking the Drudgereport when I once visited his house in North Carolina and crashed in his spare bedroom). This piece in the similarly reactionary WorldNetDaily absurdly credits Drudge with shaping all blogs, flatly stating that "there would be no blogosphere without the inspiration of Drudge." Who says conservatives don't do drugs?

Blogs Spreading Among Magazines and Newspapers. According to a trade magazine for circulation professionals, the Magazine Publishers of America recently compiled a list of about 400 blogs now being published by its member magazines. The most prolific is CNET Networks, with 33 individual blogs. The publication quotes another study, from Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism, that found three quarters of the nation's largest papers are blogging on the topic of business. I wonder if Matt Drudge is responsible for all of that activity, as well?