One of the things about following bloggers for a long time is that they start to feel like friends, even if you’ve never met or communicated with them. Some you stick with for years through thick and thin, some come into your life at just the right time, and some fade out of your life and are missed.
Every year I compile a list of blogs that I find meaningful, and with the current dominance of social media platforms I find the art of independent publishing and curation more important than ever. In a year rocked by incessant politics and propaganda, I've shied away from political blogs except in cases of writers who make a point of going well beyond what the media covers in order to uncover the deep undercurrents of a story.
The rise of newsletters is also blurring the lines, so for the first time I’ll be lumping together blogs and newsletters in my annual list. In cases of bloggers who also write newsletters, I generally go with the blog and mention the newsletter in the description if it’s particularly noteworthy. In other cases - especially with those (like me) who have started using Basecamp’s Hey World - I’m not entirely sure if what I’m reading is a blog or a newsletter. So lumping them together makes sense.
I’ll be releasing the annual list on Thursday morning, so stay tuned!
(Image courtesy of RetroSupply on Unsplash)