New Webzine Launch

After weeks of talking about this, or so it seems to me, the first issue of my first webzine devoted to highlighting a few of the best blog-posts I could find has finally been published. Blog Tower will, I hope, serve several purposes. First, it will give people a second chance to read great posts they may have missed the first time around. Second, it will start to call attention to the great writing in blogs that's been going largely unnoticed not just by the general public but by blog readers themselves. And third, it will foster continuing conversations about issues that tend to get picked up and dropped along with the daily news by re-publishing posts on those issues in special sections.

In this first issue, for instance, the Religion page is devoted to posts about the role of faith in public life and includes two posts written by evangelicals--one who still is and opposes an evangelical litmus test, and one who left the movement and talks about why--as well as a centrist's thoughts on the 'Great Awakening' and what it might mean.

But there's lots more: pages on politics, the arts, and humor, as well as a page that will showcase a featured article in every issue. This issue it's a moving, beautifully written piece by a soldier serving in Iraq who finds her father's face in the faces of the Iraqis around her. In a way, it's a meditation on the universality of laugh lines, and how to read them.

I suppose Thanksgiving week wasn't the best time to launch an effort like this. What can I say? I forgot. But I hope when things calm down next week you'll take a few moments to check out the work presented by Blog Tower, and then check out the sites where the pieces come from. A few of them regular readers of the Alley will be familiar with, but quite a few more they may not be, and they're all worth more than one look.

Incidentally, it should be noted that PBA members figure heavily in the make-up of this first issue--about half the contributors belong. That isn't because I was prejudiced, it was because so many of the PBAers write so damn well. If you don't believe me, check it out for yourself.

Finally, if I have been MIA the last few weeks, it's mostly due to the election and getting BT ready, not because I've lost interest in posting here. Plus, Net Politik has so many fine writers now that there's been no dirth of talent hereabouts. I will try to post more often, but I can't promise anything: I'm getting two other zines ready for publication, Aardvark Monthly, a humor zine aimed for a Dec launch containing material written especially for it by some of the funniest bloggers around (including one of the trio from Fafblog--or maybe all three; I don't know yet, they haven't told me--and Lumpenblog's Dan Roentsch debuting a devastating and devastatingly funny take-off of 'The O'Reilly Factor' that I hope will become a regular feature), and a third zine aiming to be the bloggers' equivalent of The Atlantic Monthly or Harper's.

I promise to try to keep you up on everything that's happening, and hope you'll enjoy what we're planning. In the meantime, you can usually find me at the Alley or at Dispatch from the Trenches.