Grapes, Soured?
It seems to me the blessing and the curse of blogs is their amateurism. Blessing because we can show more personality and daring than the local paper does. We can be silly, profound, humorous, pious. We're less guarded, less worried about offending readers. There is a purity in doing something without monetary compensation.
It's also a curse because obviously the content is uneven, the production values suspect, the writing unedited, etc...
Chesterton had many wonderful things to say about the amateur. I think he would've loved blogs. But for me these web awards violate the spirit of blogdom. Doth I smell a sneaking professionalism? I began to read the winner of "Best Article or Post About Weblogs", a long, laborious piece that seemed to say in the first two pages what anyone could say in five sentences. This tendency to say obvious things in a very lengthy way is a hallmark of academia, which I think killeth the spirit. (Or, more likely, I have ADHD.)
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