I’m curious to find out from the commentariat who their favourite bloggers are.
I find myself in one of those situations where I’ve sort of dumped a bunch of sites that I was reading for a period of time for a variety of reasons and would like to replenish my stock so that I can go through essentially the same process of culling and eventually adding to a handful of main stays. Plus, it is always interesting to see who readers of this site also tend to read regularly.
Please note that this is not a back door method of having a bunch of readers shout out, “You guys are my favourite bloggers!” That is both unhelpful to me and, uh, not true. Also disqualified due to technicality are Andrew Sullivan, Kevin Drum, The American Scene, and Daniel Larison, who I read on a daily-to-a-couple-of-times-a-week basis already.
Other than that, have at it in the comments: who’s your favourite blogger and why?
Will Truman 
Kim 
DensityDuck 
Mark Thompson 
Randy Harris 
Plinko 
Teacher 
Borat: “I do a picture, only small, of the Tishnik Masacre. Where many Uzbeks…crushed!”
Kindly Gray Hippie: “How did you feel when you drew this?”
Borat: “Very proud!”.
KGH: “I’m just listening with sadness…a little sadness for your people…?”
Borat: “Yes…no, it is not sad. It is us who do the kill!”
When in doubt,
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The Juicebox mafia crew (Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, etc) is always good. I’m also a fan of Ryan Aven, at ryanavent.com until recently and now at the Economist–unfortunately, the moronic lack of bylines over at the latter place prevents you from positively IDing posts, but anything about urban development is probably his. A Plain Blog About Politics is by a working political scientist, and it’s quite good, although his contrarianism is best taken in small doses (YMMV, but I’ll stand by the quality of his posts). And donkeylicious.com is also worth reading.
For politics: Radley Balko (theagitator.com) and hit and run (reason.com/blog/)
For movie reviews: James Bowman (www.jamesbowman.net/) (Seriously, I only go out to the movies, like, 4 times a year… he tells me about obscure films and why I’d like them and mainstream films and why I’d hate them).
For lefty stuff, I love butterflies and wheels, even now (www.butterfliesandwheels.com/)
For righty stuff, I love drudge and insty. Both whom probably ought be banned so I’ll say instead that I like… golly, there ain’t anybody in my links file that I haven’t sat down and had a beer with nor been banned from… well, I suppose that there’s Mencius Moldbug but he’s so far right that “right” doesn’t exactly cover it (be sure to check out his post on why he is not a libertarian! http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-i-am-not-libertarian.html ). (unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/)
But, for the most part, I check Insty, Drudge, Hit&Run, and you guys.
I love you guys.
John Cole – he was worth reading when he was a full-on winger, and his slow transition to a registered Democrat (beginning with the Schaivo matter) really brought him out.
ta nehisi coates blog on The Atlantic is one of the best. Not only is a very good writer with insight, his comments section is constantly interesting and informative.
Kevin Drum is very good of well reasoned, liberal thought w/o much spittle flecking or losing his mind.
First of all, you guys are among my favorites and I don’t have much desire to see the subject matter, depth of analysis, thoughtfulness, or culture of exchange that you’ve already achieved here be altered all that much. So I’m wary of what you’ll be doing with this information.
With that said, a list of some of the other bloggers I read frequently — at least the ones that would be relevant to the sorts of things that this blog focuses on, which are things like politics, law, culture, and ethics — listed in no particular order: Doug Mataconis, Dave Schuler, Will Truman, the whole crew but especially Ken at Popehat, Howard Friedman, Rick Moran, Alonzo Fyfe, Chris Hallquist, Stephen Green, particularly Paul Campos at Lawyers Guns and Money, David Schraub, and Will Collier. What I like about the writers on this list is that they all provide intellectually challenging and well-written posts on subjects that I like to think deeply about. Many are good news sources but I don’t look to blogs to provide news; I look to a blog to provide me with an insight into a particular situation or set of facts, an insight I might not have come to myself.
Thanks to everyone for the offerings. TPL, this is a purely personal exercise for me and doesn’t have any bearing on the direction or editorial content of this site.
Was this an exercise to see who actually reads posts, or is this:
an update?
That was me indicating that a.) this wasn’t a subtle attempt at soliciting praise for the site, that wasn’t the point of the post and b.) indicating who I already read regularly and so don’t need a referral for.
There are those of us who excel at doing what we’re told.
There are those of us who aren’t quite so good at it.
Ones who spell like Americans unless they’re British (and I don’t read many British bloggers and mostly they spell like Americans anyway).
Clayton Cramer, Erin O’Connor, William Dyer, and the crew at The American Catholic.
Kevin Carson from The Mutualist, Bob Murphy at Free Advice and Roderick Long’s Austro-Athenian Empire are my most frequently read, though these picks are probably a tad too radical for here.
Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic. His posts on anything in politics or the news are typically very insightful and different from the usual and predictable reactions of most bloggers and political commentators. He avoids generalizations and calls out people who use them. He’s willing to recognize when he doesn’t know things and admit when he’s wrong, which is an extremely rare skill. And he’s got an engaged group of commenters whose discussions about posts often make points as good as his own – his blog is more like a conversation, and a civil one at that, than any other one I’ve found besides this site.
Radley Balko is the single best blogger, in my opinion, in terms of urgency of cause, discipline, and insight.
Minor disagreements aside, I still think Jeffrey Goldberg is probably the most clear-eyed writer on Israel. And I third Ta-Nehisi for insight, humility and friendliness. I’m also a regular watcher of bloggingheads.tv, though I suspect you are as well.
I’m going to come right out then; like Sullivan and I’m not ashamed of that even if he sometimes can be an overdramatic queen. I enjoy Ambider and Mcardle and of course I love Coates so the Atlantic is a big place for me. My home is TNR which was the online magazine where I cut my teeth on american politics and yes I admit that I sometimes even enjoy reading Peretz. He’s a crank but he’s an interesting crank.
Oh and Goldberg of course, he is brilliant on Israel.
You mean Jeffrey, right? (Not, I hope, Jonah?)
I have mixed feelings about him, like the rest of my cohort (and, as a liberal, half-Israeli American Jew born in 1984, the so-called Juicebox Mafia are my cohort, though I have nowhere near their connections.) I think at times he has been too quick to condemn other people for taking nearly the same positions that he himself espouses for what he sees as the “wrong reasons”, though I could be a bit confused on that point.
He’s really quite funny though, in a way few political bloggers ever are.
I should mention that my cousin Dan Rozenson is an international affairs blogger for the George Washington (University) Discourse, and seems to take after Goldberg (and Jon Chait) quite a bit.
I really like Andrew even though as someone said he can be a drama queen. Someone get him his tiara! Every time I get sick of him whining, he writes this incredibly insightful post that makes me regret doubting him, though.
Not to sound like suck up too much, but I actually really like Erik’s writing. Even though I disagree with him fairly often, I still find his approach to be very thoughtful and insightful. And of course the rest of the writers here are great, too! Much like Ta-Nehisi’s blog (which is also a favorite) the comments section here (besides a few trolls) is actually worth reading, which is quite the accomplishment for a site that deals a lot with politics.
I quote Megan McArdle to my friends more than any other blogger.
I also recommend Joel Kotkin – who is not so much a blogger but someone who cross-posts his articles on a blog. He writes about urban studies. Brilliant guys.
There’s a very good blog at The Daily Yonder which covers rural issues.
I used to really like Front Porch Republic but they have really gone downhill lately.
Interesting re: FPR. Care to explain why you feel they’ve gone “down hill” lately? I haven’t read FPR regularly for a while, though was pretty keyed in when they first launched. But my drop off doesn’t have anything to do with a perceived decline in quality. Not challenging you here, just honestly curious.
I like Dave Schuler at the glitteringeye, Scott Sumner at themoneyillusion, and theandrogynoussmurf.
Okay – now how about bloggers you really, really like but somehow always forget to read? That’s Ta-Nehisi Coates for me. I really like him and somehow I always forget to read him. There are others like that but I forget who they are right now….
Totally with everyone else on Ta-Nehisi being awesome. I’d also like to give a shout out to his friend./collegue Alyssa Rosenberg, whose pop-culture blog is almost always great.
Most of the other blogs I real regularly, I suspect would not be of interest to anyone else here, though, or you are already reading…
Margaret Soltan- University Diaries- is a gem.
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