L.A. Voice revisited

See my post below on Mack Reed's departure from L.A. Voice?

There was some talk at transition time about the new L.A. Voice blog-runners being politically conservative. That's not the problem. While I enjoy many conservative bloggers (beginning with the late, very great Cathy Seipp, and continuing today with Bridget Johnson, even conservative Daily News editor Chris Weinkopf, a fine stylist, to be sure), I sense a certain listlessness, lack of focus and some fundamental design errors over at today's L.A. Voice (the wideness of the type, and its persistence in being centered are the main design errors).

I guess I miss Mack. And ever since Cathy's death, I haven't really kept up with the L.A.-centric blogs. Most of it has been my focus on the Daily News' Click technology blog, for which I've written hundreds of often-lengthy posts in the past few months, mostly about free, open-source software (and specifically the Linux operating system). I don't even keep up with L.A. Observed much these days (although I do try to drop in every other day, at least -- Kevin Roderick is still the barometer of L.A. media, and that barometer needs checking).

As far as writing about Linux goes, it's been pretty easy for me to get a large readership. The Linux community is rabid, wants to read anything. And mostly, as a user of LXer, I can put up links to my own stories (and others that I find interesting, but mostly my own). You can get drawn in by what "works," by what draws readers, and it's not musing about San Fernando Valley bedroom communities, or random thoughts.

But there is room for that.

And there's a certain value to blogging on my own time, on my own sites. So I'll be doing that more and more in the weeks and months ahead. I still have the blogs you see at the right, along with the many at the Daily News to which I contribute either heavily or lightly, and I plan to add at least one Blogger site related to my life in technology. I'm not sure what I'll call it, or what the focus will be, but it will appear when I've figured it all out.