PORTLAND BLOGS: TOP TEN ACCORDING TO RANKER.COM

What’s it take to make the top ten list of Portland blogs. If you read ranker.com, the answer is be a newspaper since Willamette Week and The Portland Mercury top the the list at #1 and #2.

I’m not complaining that newspapers and blogs shouldn’t be compared but if it was my list I’m certain I’d hear those complaints.

You know the complaint? Comparing apples to oranges noise.

And I’m not whining that boomerpdx.com isn’t on the list. At least not out loud and in print.

Besides, if you know Portland blogs, or Portland at all, you’d know wweek.com isn’t just another blog.

I started buying WWeek for current dirt when I moved to Portland in the early 80’s. Back then it cost $.75, not free. Times were harder way back then and I missed picking up the Village Voice in my old neighborhood. I went from VV to WW, from NYC to PDX.

From coast to coast no one read or ranked blogs. I think you know why. Today if an internet company in Los Angeles calls a weekly a paper a blog, it’s still not a blog. Maybe it doesn’t matter, and maybe you don’t care if another non-blog like portlandmercury.com is wweek’s local competition.

If someone explained how wweek is west side and portlandmercury is east side, you would try and change the subject. The top story for one is a horrible case of domestic abuse in the West Hills; top story for the other explains racial Portland history.

It’s all Portland stuff written by Portland news writers, award winning writers, not Portland bloggers.

What’s it take to know a city like Portland? Get out on the streets and check things out.

Find out what people are doing, where new buildings are going up. Look for a nondescript building that houses the Portland elite club where the West Hills bad boy meets his friends, where the KKK knew the ropes.

A Portland blogger needs to cross the mean streets now and then to get their face out there.