Fast Fiction

Yesterday there was a weird dispute. Well, I suppose it continues today. LAist, a group blog with topics about Los Angeles posted that it has more visits to their site than blogging.la.

Okay.

They declared themselves the most popular blog in LA.

Here are a few questions I had:

Does it include people who read by feed? While reading by feed does not get included in hits, I suppose feed hits should be used for determining ad prices either. But some people do both. I do both. I visit the site regularly but I also use an aggregator called Bloglines. Sometimes I’ll read from there, sometimes I’ll browse to the site because I’m at a computer that doesn’t have my bloglines info stored in it.

LAist does not show where the hits come from. Are LAist visitors in LA or somewhere else? For that matter, who reads b.la? I haven’t a clue. In fact, I’m not sure I care.

As for LAist, I consider it like Star. It’s a rag. It’s oppressively negative and meanspirited, focused on things like cult of celebrity and dissing public transportation. They steal photos. It doesn’t reflect the life that I lead as an Angelino. B.la does, but maybe that’s because my friends also write for it. As far as I know LAist pays its writers. B.la does not.

Could b.la be improved? Sure, we could post more often. A photo blog would be cool. Does it need a more consistent editorial voice, so much so that you’d not know who posted without looking at the attribution? Hell, no. There is no way I’d ever write for a blog where I had to use the “editorial we.”

Territorialism has always bothered me. Who cares if there’s someone on top or not. It’s the web. It’s the place for specialization. They’re group blogs about one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world ... if LAist really wants to be on top they’d blog in Spanish. That’s how you win in LA radio.