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All Good Blogs Must Come To An End

OK, ya'll get to decide whether Beltway Blogroll has been a good blog, but it is coming to an end.

My tenure at National Journal ends tomorrow with the final issue of Technology Daily, where I served as the managing editor for six years before being promoted to the editorship in November 2006. Beltway Blogroll, a direct outgrowth of the interest I developed in politics and technology while at Tech Daily, will cease publication at the same time.

Its death is by no means sudden. I started Beltway Blogroll and a companion column for NationalJournal.com in June 2005 with the goal in mind of proving that blogs would quickly gain power in policy circles inside the Beltway, just like they did in the political realm in 2004. Mission accomplished.

If you doubt it, take a look at the blogroll to your left. It is at least twice as large as when I started Beltway Blogroll -- and inside-the-Beltway blogs are started with such frequency now that I long ago stopped trying to find them all. That's especially true of the "mainstream blogosphere" occupied by professional journalists. Why do so many of them blog now? Because that's what more and more people in Washington read.

The proof of blog power abounds: regular blogger conference calls and briefings by politicians, think tanks and trade groups; bloggers who work for presidential campaigns and other candidates; bloggers who have infiltrated mainstream newsrooms or who write columns for major publications; and the achievements go on.

Think back to the top 10 blog stories of 2006, including the Porkbusters, and to the biggest stories of 2007 -- the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the defeat of immigration reform in the Senate. Blogs weren't the only factor or even necessarily the deciding factor in any of those stories, but their influence most definitely was on display.

Beltway Blogroll has chronicled it all.

The mission of this blog actually has been complete for quite a while -- so much so that I pondered ending it months before National Journal decided to stop publishing Tech Daily. The only reason I kept it alive is that I love blogging, and I have loved even more having a high-profile forum like this for doing it.

I am indebted to former NJ.com head honcho Troy Schneider, now the new media editor at the New America Foundation, for giving me this forum. Although Troy edited the column I wrote for NJ.com, he gave me the keys to the blog itself and let me post at will. I believe that was a first for National Journal, and the editorial freedom was inspiring and absolutely intoxicating.

The inspiration led me to give one of my own reporters the same kind of freedom at Tech Daily Dose. Blogging loses all of its appeal and energy if editorial oversight is anything more than superficial. It's much wiser, and managerially easier, to hire good bloggers, get out of their way and just enjoy their work than it is to shackle them with the chains of old media.

I'm glad to report that an unshackled Tech Daily Dose will live on when parts of Tech Daily's coverage are folded into National Journal's CongressDaily.

As for me, you can bet I'll keep blogging. In 2006, my work at Tech Daily and Beltway Blogroll inspired me to start another blog of my own called AirCongress. It serves as a portal to audio and video of, by and about Congress, and I plan to keep the site going. If you care about what happens in Congress on a daily basis, you should make AirCongress a regular online stop.

As noted yesterday, I also started a one-year blog project this month. Dubbed Taxation With Representation, the purpose is to make clear just how great the tax burden is in America. And as our family visits the homes of U.S. presidents in coming years, I'll be feeding content to my blog on that topic.

Don't be surprised if I add more blogs to the mix. I've already bought an Internet address for one, and ever since former President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998, I've owned his legacy -- the domain names clintonlegacy.com and clintonlegacy.net. Those could come in handy in the blogosphere if his wife, Hillary, is elected president later this year.

All of which is to say that even though Beltway Blogroll is coming to a close, I'll still be around the blogosphere. Plus the start of my full-time career move into Internet video is just days away. If any of you want to keep in touch going forward, you can e-mail me at danny@aircongress.com.

Thanks for your readership, and keep blogging!

Posted by Danny | 07:07 AM

Comments

Great work, Danny. I've enjoyed your blogging here. Good luck ahead!

Jon Henke | 01.30.08 11:26 AM

Danny -

Beltway Blogroll has been a remarkable read over the past few years. And you have been a great friend along our mutual journey in to the modern world.

This blog will be missed. For many in this space, it was a place to see and watch the industry blunder and succeed. In its reporting, it was always fair and balanced and had more than its fair share of breaking news and inside scoops from the frontlines.

I look forward to maintaining our friendship.

Revolution,
David All

David All | 01.30.08 11:31 AM

Good run. Can't wait to see what's next.

David Mastio | 01.30.08 09:02 PM

Good luck, Danny. I've had Air Congress RSS's for a while now.

Jill | 02.01.08 01:18 PM

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