I've got two observations from the wi-fi wilderness.
The first is that a growing number of newspapers are getting into the blog business. If blogging began as something of a repudiation of the mainstream media ("MSM," as bloggers like to say), then the press is doing a fair job of co-opting the medium. Arguably the best state-focused blogs I found in California, Florida and Illinois are all offshoots of companies that kill trees to report the news.
My other observation is about ideology. I'm finding more state-focused blogs that come from the political left than from the right. Why is that?
One possibility is that Democrats feel besieged by national politics. Shut out of power in Washington, they're turning their attention to what's going on in their statehouses. That's what I concluded when I looked at Texas blogs in Governing last summer. At the time, the Austin blogging corps was dominated by voices from the left. I wrote:
That's probably to be expected -- not because bloggers tend to be Democrats but because those first drawn to blogging tend to be dissenters. Nationally, conservatives first took up blogging because they believed a liberal media ignored their views. In Texas politics, the reverse has happened.
David Benzion, one of the few conservative bloggers in Texas, agrees with this theory. Benzion is managing editor of the "Lone Star Times," a blog that he and Houston talk-radio host Dan Patrick started in January. "If you're a 'progressive' in Texas, you feel like you're under siege," Benzion says. "You're living in George W. Bush's conservative Texas. Some people on the liberal side picked up blogging in state politics as a way to vent. There are probably some on the conservative side who would be blogging about state politics, but don't feel the need to because they're basically content."
I'll admit that it's possible that I'm not looking for right-leaning blogs in the correct places. Left-leaning state blogs recently conglomerated into a website called leftyblogs.com. That's a handy starting point for any exploration of state blogs. I haven't found anything comparable on the right, although Louisiana Conservative does offer a many-state sampling.
I'm also using tools like Technorati and Google's Blog Search to mine for state blogs. Most of what I'm finding on the right, however, is focused on federal issues: Judge Alito, NSA wiretaps, etc.
What am I missing?
