Here's the article by Noah Schachtman profiling Glenn Reynolds in today's Circuits section of the Times.

Now you'll get to see how two long e-mails can be boiled down to a paragraph, which is reduced to a sentence, which is then cut.

:-)

I had been rather startled on January 6th, a week ago Monday, to receive an e-mail from Noah saying he was profiling Glenn for the New York Times and "like to speak with you about the influence Reynolds' wields in -- excuse the expression -- the blogosphere," and that I should call him on the phone immediately, since his deadline was Wednesday afternoon. Because I got home late that evening, and neglected to check my e-mail until it was about 10 p.m. Rocky Mountain Time, which meant it was midnight in NY, I responded in e-mail instead. I was exhausted, and daunted at trying to be articulate while so tired and rushed, but here's what I managed to grind out:

I'm afraid I'd not checked my e-mail in some hours, and only just saw this; I expect it's too late to call you, as it's after midnight East Coast time, and in any case, if it isn't too late for you, it's too late for me to be pithy with a good quote, I think; I'll be going to sleep shortly. Unfortunately, I'm out the door early tomorrow, and will be out until at least 8 or 9 p.m. East Coast time tomorrow, away from both phone and e-mail, but I can try to call you when I get home (I'd appreciate a call back, actually; I'm really broke just now).

I think neologisms such as "blog" and "blogger" and "blogosphere," while rough, uncouth, and ugly sounding to most people at first, rapidly become simply common terms after sufficient exposure to such usage.

I can say that I think Glenn's influence is immense among the set of bloggers and blog-readers who focus on news and politics -- the blogs and readers that largely coalesced on and not long after September 11th, and which thus wound up with the oft-inaccurate, off-inappropriate,
oft-inadquate, sobriquet of "warbloggers." His influence is particularly strong with those of a more conservative and libertarian bent, but for many bloggers of a more leftist persuasion, he often serves equally, or more so, as the Big Target to rebut, challenge, or criticize.

On the other hand, given that the "blogosphere" is also made up of such alternative clusterings, many pre-dating the "warblogger" phenomenon, as the original technobloggers, or those whose "blogs" are simply largely personal journals, or those focused on music and pop culture, or any of the innumerable sub-groupings (Iranian teenage girl Britney Spears fans, say), it's worthy of note that Glenn is as largely invisible and irrelevant to many such bloggers as other political/news-oriented
bloggers are.

On the third hand, most bloggers aren't neatly pigeon-holed, despite superficial appearances, and even if their blog is largely single-topic oriented, such as, say, many of the "sex blogs" are, or music blogs are, many bloggers have multiple interests, and also follow some or many of the news/political blogs.

Most bloggers -- using the definition of "blogger" as someone who links great deal in their entries, not just someone who writes a personal journal -- are by nature neophiles, news oriented (by whatever ideosyncratic definition of "news" they may prefer), and thus often tend to be unendingly, pantingly, looking for tips on New Stuff, As Soon As Possible, hoping to be the first kid on their ASCII block to post a given link, and comment and be witty and insightful on a given bit of news and its implicit issues. And to thus gain recognition, and reputation, and links, and hits, which are the currencies of the blogging world.

Thus Glenn, as something of an idiosyncratic generalist, tends to be popular, though the ever-growing, in snowball-down-a-mountain fashion, blogging phenomenon, has also contributed to this simply insofar as Glenn established himself as a major, useful, intelligent, coordinating site of information on September 11th, when most major news site servers were overwhelmed by the crush of hits, and unavailable. Glenn made his reputation then, and as the prime example of the self-starting non-professional news source (excepting perhaps Matt Drudge, whom I don't think of as a blogger, and whom it's not clear to me that he thinks of himself as a blogger), then became the most cited example by the professional media, and thus gained more readers and more links, and thus more links and cites, and thus more readers, and thus more links and cites, and... thus the snowball becomes ever larger. This phenomenon can be seen in similar, if smaller, growth of those who have found a niche, and gained like-minded, or intrigued, readers; examples would be, for instance, Asparagirl http://www.asparagirl.com/blog/, whose hits, I believe, surged after being touted by king-of-the-hill of self-supporting-professional-bloggers, Andrew Sullivan, as a young, gay (actually bi-sexual), conservative, Jewish, New York, female blogger, or Vodkapundit, who has tapped the snarky humorous young conservative readership, or Atrios, whose Eschaton blog http://atrios.blogspot.com/ was an early drum-beater on Trent Lott, and who has rapidly risen in linkage from leftist bloggers, particularly after citations in the Washington Post, and in Paul Krugman's Times column. Howard Bashman's _How Appealing_ website http://appellateblog.blogspot.com/ is rapidly becoming essential in
legal circles. Virginia Postrel has carved out a unique liberal libertarian perspective with her dynasism/stasis-dichotomy analysis. And so on. Myself, being ideologically and politically fairly idiosyncratic, and thus tending to irritate conservatives, leftists, libertarians, socialists, and more or less everyone on the political spectrum with fair frequency, I know that my "popularity" and readership aren't nearly what they would be if I chose to simply pick a political crowd and throw red meat to it, as so many doctrinaire political blogs do, or even if I simply picked a single topic and stuck to it, rather than sticking to posting on whatever strikes my fancy and interest, be it politics, weird news, technology, pop culture, science fiction, history, archeology, neurology, or whatever.

Being one of those idiosyncratic, rather-generalist-type bloggers, I find that my hits surge overwhelmingly when linked to by one of the Big Bloggers, and none more so than when the Instapundit specifically links to me, as I recently attested.

(I imagine that a link from a major newspaper would dwarf an Instalink, however, and I also can't compare to a link from Andrew Sullivan, having never yet received one, though I'm told it can be a heady, and server-disturbing, experience.) I think of Glenn as, in some ways, the Table Of Contents of political blogging. He points, and an awful lot of people follow the links.

Although definitely somewhat tilted towards the conservative/libertarian side, he's his own ideology, the opposite of rabid, and generous in linking to those who disagree with him, including those of a liberal or leftist persuasion. I find him generally fair-minded, although I certainly disagree with him on many issues. Although hardly alone, or an overwhelming voice, he's distinctly an important voice in spreading word of a particular issue or article, and in ringing a bell on an issue; when Glenn sounds the call, a lot of bloggers and readers hear it, link to it, debate and argue it, and generally spread the word. He doesn't set the agenda of the politico-newsblogging world, but submits a lot of topics, a major voice, to the debate.

Technoblogger examples: http://boingboing.net/,http://doc.weblogs.com/
Sexblogger examples: http://www.dazereader.com/weblog.htm or see here.

Early bloggers: http://www.megnut.com/, http://www.kottke.org/.

Sorry this isn't more coherent; too tired. I'll see if I can do any better tomorrow, but no promises. Any questions?

Thanks for asking me, and might I ask how you ran across me?

best wishes,
Gary Farber

Better off asking him that. I can certainly say that I'm not the only one to observe that Glenn is extremely generous in linking to anyone who writes something he finds interesting, or who provides an interesting link, and I've not observed him to discriminate in his generosity because of political views or disagreements. That is, he's certainly inclined to be particularly generous in linking to people who provide support for his point of view, but he also provides plenty of links to people who disagree with him intelligently or interestingly.

Similarly, his blogroll (sidebar on the left side of his blog) includes many distant from him on most political spectrums, such as Clinton economist Brad deLong http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/, or young leftists such as Matthew Yglesias http://www.matthewyglesias.com
and Oliver Willis http://www.oliverwillis.com/ or veteran journalist Matt Welch http://mattwelch.com/warblog.html. As well as, of course, many in greater ideological sync with, or to the right of, Glenn.

This contrasts dramatically with Andrew Sullivan, who, although his blog clearly receives far more hits and attention than Glen, is pretty stingy in linking to other bloggers, provides no blogroll of other bloggers for readers to generally sample, and who doesn't appear to ever link to anyone he disagrees with unless he's going to make mock of them or condemn them.

This contrast in linking policies, and between those who are generous in spreading "link love" via blogrolls and specific links to "lesser" bloggers, and those who do not, is oft-remarked upon between fellow bloggers. It's frequently noted that those who are generous benefit by providing a more interesting blog with a greater diversity of views and information, and are in turn return linked to more often, than those who do not.

Glenn has observedly given an awful lot of bloggers boosts, and does so on a daily basis. At one point some months ago he mentioned several people regarding him as their "blog parent," i.e., having inspired them to start their own blogs, and everyone else he inspired ended up writing him, and he posted an extremely long list of those who regarded him as such. (I don't recall if that was the precise phrase used; it might have been a slightly different phrase than "blog parent," but that was the concept.)

(You can find an organized set of web pages of this sort of thing at .) Here are partial lists for Glenn: here -- that's 58 blogs; here -- that's 15 blogs; and here -- 3 more, and lots of bloggers don't use Blogtree.

If you're not familiar with these blogs -- I'm not familiar with them all, but with many -- you might not recognize that they span the ideological spectrum, from militant right-wingers, such as Bill Quick's _Daily Pundit_ http://www.DailyPundit.com, to idiosyncratic anti-interventionist libertarians such as Jim Henley's _Unqualified Offerings_ http://www.highclearing.com, to centrists such as Jay Zilber's _Mind Over What Matters_ http://www.zilberhere.com/blog and Geitner Simmons' _Regions of Mind_ http://regionsofmind.blogspot.com, to liberals such as
Brian Linse's _Ain'tNoBadDude_ http://aintnobaddude.com/ , or collegiate liberal _TedBarlow_ http://tedbarlow.blogspot.com, to pro-war liberals such as Mac Thomason's _War Liberal_ http://warliberal.com/mt/blog/. to leftists such as Chris Bertram's _Junius_ http://junius.blogspot.com/, or TalkLeft http://www.talkleft.com/, or Avedon Carol's _The Sideshow_ http://www.sideshow.idps.co.uk/.

My own inspiration was my longtime friend Patrick Nielsen Hayden, NY science fiction editor for Tor Books, whose Electrolite blog http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/ is superb. He directly talked me into taking the writing I'd been doing on Usenet and mailing lists, and taking it to a blog.

My politics, as I mentioned, are idiosyncratically eclectic, but it's fair to say that on a number of issues I'm distinctly more to the left than Glenn, and that I'm a great deal more favorable, on the whole, to Democrats than he is, but he's certainly given me boosts at reasonable times with links. I've seen my hits shoot up, after being "instapundited," anywhere from 200 to 1600 more, in a day, depending on the phrasing of what he said, and the timing. (Generally more towards the latter number than the former.) The effect is, however, temporary, wearing off after a day, as a rule, when the entry has scrolled off. On the other hand, I get a regular set of hits every day from being on Glenn's blogroll, along with the many dozens of others listed there.

[on what I do when I'm not blogging]:

Mm. Some blogger like to talk about themselves and such things a great deal, and some remain more or less completely anonymous. As usual, I'm somewhere in between. Let's say, for the public record, that I'm a Brooklyn-born sometime editor and freelance writer, with a background in NY publishing. And I'm available for professional editing and writing assignments. :-)

Anything else I can do you for?

I know I'll find out sooner, rather than later, by the way, but I can't help asking if your piece is for Circuits, or for which section of the Times?

Oh, and in case it's not obvious, if there's any way you can work my URL into your piece, or a sidebar, or anything, that would be deeply wonderful. :-) (Do, if this happens, please make sure you are correct in that my blog is named "Amygdala," after the part of the brain, *not* "amygdalagf," which is merely part of the URL [the title, plus my initials, because "http://amygdala.blogspot.com" was taken, though not being used]; I mention this because this error is made with some frequency.)

I will note for the record, by the way, that I've carefully only mentioned bloggers I think worthy of greater recognition and note for their fine quality.

One of the things I think makes Glenn so successful is that, in my experience, at least, he's extraordinarily reasonable, and respects people whom he disagrees with, which is more than one can say about probably three-quarters of blogdom, which often has a tendency towards shrillness, dogmatism, and echo-chamberism.

I don't know if I can respond again tonight, but if you shoot me something, I might be able to get off a quick response in the morning before I leave to be out again all day. Or, as we say, maybe not. Do let me know if I can be of further assistance, and I'll certainly make the effort if possible.

best wishes,
Gary Farber

>gary:
>
> i had to edit one of your quotes for length. want to make sure this is cool
> w you. get back at me ASAP.
>
> nms
>
> "Glenn, as something of an idiosyncratic generalist, tends to be
> popular with the news oriented, with those unendingly, pantingly, looking
> for tips on New Stuff, As Soon As Possible," wrote Gary Farber, a fellow
> blogger, in an e-mail.
I guess that will fly, so, sure, okay. Thanks for asking, rather than just making the change. I'd still like to know which Times section to look for the piece in? I guess I'll hear when it's published, but do feel free to drop a line when you know.

best wishes,
gf

gary:

could you give me a call ASAP? 212-[XXX-XXXX].
thanks.

nms

I never did hear back from him further on the article, though we did later exchange a couple of e-mails on other comments I made in response to his blog.

Thus, two long e-mails, from which a paragraph was extracted, and condensed into a sentence, which wound up in the bit bucket.

And now you know [Paul Harvey voice]... The Rest Of The Story.