1. City of blogs - Minnesota Daily http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2008/03/05/72165980
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Campus CAMPUS
Comment/Rate this Article Printer-Friendly Version E-mail This Article Diverse religions becoming the
Metro & State norm
March 6, 2008
World & Nation Flu-related hospitalizations hit a
Sports City of blogs 3-year high in February
Herbarium houses scads of
Opinion So you want to build a music and arts community? First, contact your plants
A&E system administrator. Hope Lodge residents share
stories with student group
Corrections
By Kara Nesvig, Michael Garberich, Justin Flower Professor known for his good
Features humor dies at 65
Blogs t a coffee shop outside Dinkytown this February, Paul Hirte ended his SPORTS
Backtalk cell-phone conversation: "Sure, come on over." He pocketed the phone A lot up in the air for Gophers
Multimedia heading into weekend
Drink and Dine
and focused his attention on the laptop opened on the table, then Anybody's game
First Amendment looked back up and said, "That was a friend of mine. He just asked me if their Anybody's game
Decker is doubling up - moving
Grapevines band could play a show at my house." from pads to the plate
Media Kit Minnesota faulters late, again
Daily Card falls to Indiana
X-word Solution With that, Hirte's eyes dropped
Sudoku Solution back down and scanned the screen. OPINION
Archives Letters to the editor
A single browser was opened and Students pay the price for flawed
Classifieds
several tabs cascaded near the top priorities
Search Tap that
- one for his e-mail, one for his The right to leak information
Housing
Employment MySpace profile, one for What Wellstone would do
Transportation mnspeak.com (an online local
Announcements
news aggregator), and one for
Merchandise
Services MoreCowbell.net, a local music
Hey You blog launched in April 2004 by
Place Ad
webmaster Kyle Matteson.
Jobs
(Matteson also oversees Arcade
Jobs Main
Job Openings
Fire's Web site and a fan site for
See Moe Work Wilco, and developed and
Online Application contributes to reveillemag.com, an
PDF Application
online repository for some of the
About
best homespun music journalism
About Us advertisement
Subscribe in the state.
Survey Research Coral Moore
Marketing Hirte, who studied at the Kyle Matteson, the creator of
Rack Locations University for three semesters,
Contact MoreCowebell.net
Alumni helps run More Cowbell and works
at the coffee shop part-time. The blog is a purveyor of the local indie-rock
Alumni Home
Donations scene, and arguably one of the best sources for information on every indie act
Mentorship that comes through the Twin Cities, thanks in large part to Hirte's constant
Profiles
updates and to his meticulous attention.
Old Photos
Biographies
Banquet Photos "When I started posting on More Cowbell, I made it a goal to post 1,000 times
Alumni Insider in a year," he said. As of the end of February, Hirte, writing under the name
Board & Contacts
About the MDAA
"digital paul," had logged over 1300 posts on the blog since January 2007.
The next most frequent poster is "solace," the name used by Matteson, with a
little more than 800 posts since the site was created.
advertisement
But More Cowbell is just one of a
number of local blogs acting as
arbiters for all things cool, hipster,
overhyped, trendy, fun, indie,
obnoxious - choose your adjective -
that exist solely to help you slink
your way out of the home and into
the Twin Cities after sundown.
Together, they constitute the panel
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2. City of blogs - Minnesota Daily http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2008/03/05/72165980
propagating an online Coral Moore
Emma Berg, the director of mplsart.com
phenomenon that's becoming a
trend in its own right, even as it
continues to change shape: The all-encompassing blog - as event coordinator
and PR representative, as personal journal and public journalist, as nightlife
sponsor, and, sure, even as friend. These blogs are happy to devour your
nightlife seven days a week and eager to spit it back up like the mother birds
perched in the trees outside your window.
What they produce and reproduce more often than not comes in clean,
easy-to-digest Web content, with sharp aesthetics and a keen, definitive
judgment on what to do - where, when, and with whom. Those criteria are a
veritable precondition given their creators' multitalented, multitasked
approach to art and culture, a role traditionally held by newspaper and
magazine journalists and the companies they work for. (And for the record,
what these individuals are doing is journalism.) They are part business, and
to one another, part business associate. They can be your confidante late at
night or early the next morning, as memories from that night gradually
return to you - some even have the photos to help you remember.
And yet, it also seems that to the public they are part stranger, at least for the
time being. Soon though, if you are not already, you may be more familiar
than you want to be with their domains and their domain names (there is
such a thing as too much exposure). But for now, fortunately for them, they're
probably too fresh for backlash.
Tyler Stevermer is an architecture and interior design senior at the
University. His look varies from week to week, from day to day, throughout
the week, and probably throughout the day. A single-breasted blazer fits him
as genuinely as a V-neck and denim, and if the evening warrants it, he's not
opposed to donning all three at once, or ditching the denim and slipping into
some tight-fitting lamé. You might notice him by his thick-framed glasses
colored a sort of chromatic honey, though even they absorb and reflect
whatever color happens to be nearby; and so, although you could have sworn
they were charcoal the last time you saw him, they may be a light lilac the
next time. But the point isn't to notice Stevermer; that's his job. He notices
you.
Stevermer posts on and manages The
FRIENDS OF FRIENDS
Minneapoline
(theminneapoline.blogspot.com, Thrifty Hipster thriftyhipster.com
Since its inception in 2003, Thirty
pronounced: Minneapo-LEAN), a blog Hipster has been the main source for
that covers local street fashion through information on local happy hours.
straightforward means: The two With over 12,000 people on their
mailing list and 6,000 hits each day,
contributors take their cameras to the Thrifty Hipster is dedicated to
streets and find it. Graphic designer accurate information that is easy to
Ellen Dahl started the blog in November access. This in part is the reason
Dogwillo will soon debut a new site,
2006. Stevermer joined her at the localhipster.com, an updated version
beginning of 2007, and the two continue of the old site, with more reviews
and an interactive map.
to maintain the site together through
"You know what you're doing on
Google's free blog site, blogger.com. Saturday night. You're going to a
concert with your friends, we built
Street fashion (think vita.mn's regular the site for that person that's bored
on a Wednesday night and wants to
cachet of photos in its back pages, also go out, but isn't sure where to go,"
the work of Dahl) proliferated among said Matt Dogwillo, a former
Japan's Westernized youth culture at the University student and the founder of
thriftyhipster.com.
beginning of the millennium. The style is
big in Japan (Tokyo Street Style - mnVibe mnvibe.com
mnVibe is a posting board for local
www.style-arena.jp, also linked from The electronic music enthusiasts that has
Minneapoline), and thanks in large part been a part of Minnesota's dance
to blogs like The Minneapoline, it has music community for over eight
years.
become big in hipster enclaves Vital Culture, formerly the old Vital
throughout the world.
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3. City of blogs - Minnesota Daily http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2008/03/05/72165980
Yet characterizing street fashion is Vinyl record store downtown,
currently hosts the site, which has
thorny, and the style has its detractors. over 8,000 members, and receives
2,000 visitors a day.
"These are clowns who have just
discovered American Apparel and have
yet to discover backless bras," one anonymous commenter wrote in response
to pictures posted from First Avenue's "Solid Gold New Year" celebration.
"There are a lot of people who are just
OTHER LOCAL BLOGS TO CHECK
flat out offended by what people are OUT:
wearing," Stevermer said. "But if
blogs.walkerart.org
someone's got the guts to do it, I'm going minnpost.com
to record it." mnspeak.com
culturebully.com
The Minneapoline's simple format calls flakmag.com
sovietpanda.com
for a single page of digital photographs overheardinminneapolis.com
uploaded from Stevermer's or Dahl's howwastheshow.blogspot.com
camera, along with an occasional reveillemag.com
moongoons.com
comment on the fashion by one of them.
It's a format duplicated in cities
throughout the world, from Paris-based Facehunter to Jakarta's JSL, Jakarta
Street Looks (both hosted by blogger.com).
Although The Minneapoline is primarily about the fashion, it does play a
supporting role in determining where its subjects should go, simply by being
where some of them already are.
"Ellen covers the bar scene," Stevermer said. "And if I really need some
photos, I know I can go to the Espresso Royale in Dinkytown. And there's
always Too Much Love (Saturdays in First Avenue's main room)."
Unlike More Cowbell's model - a calendar to help people find the best
indie-rock on any given night - The Minneapoline reserves its digital estate to
report on what happened the night before, and more specifically, how people
looked when they were there.
The fashion-conscious magazine l'étoile has had a slightly different
motivation for its blog than either More Cowbell or The Minneapoline (linked
from the magazine's homepage, letoilemagazine.com).
"The blog was originally created to keep the brand fresh and l'étoile in
people's minds in between print issues," Arts Editor Kate Iverson wrote in an
e-mail. "Our online format definitely gets more attention since it's constantly
being updated, and we've got tons of loyal fans that plan their weekend
around what we say is cool."
Editor in Chief and Publisher Beth Hammarlund first introduced the Twin
Cities to l'étoile in 2004 as a sturdy 8x5-inch magazine devoted to fashion.
The magazine has since blossomed into a respected name in the art, culture
and fashion community, averaging one issue each year, including its fourth
and most recent issue, a 160-page, 9x12-inch collectible published last spring.
However, owing in part to the limitations of an all-volunteer based operation
- the notoriously bound elements of time and money, for instance - and the
need for a more cost-effective business model, l'étoile will only appear online
beginning this year.
"Being a privately published magazine with an all-volunteer staff, going
online will not only be more cost-effective, but will allow us to have a
constant flow of content," Iverson wrote. "It also opens the door to many
more contributors and readers from all over the world. The blog is a great
events calendar, has
cool interviews, art, music and style picks, but we think we can take it a few
steps further with more extensive content and interactive features."
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4. City of blogs - Minnesota Daily http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2008/03/05/72165980
The decision to transform l'étoile into an exclusively online magazine is only
one example of print journalism's continued exploration of (and at times,
frustration with) the Internet's impact on the trade. As February wound
down, The Rake, a free monthly magazine whose scope spreads from the
Twin Cities to the surrounding metro area, cited a lack of advertising revenue
and unmanageable printing costs when it announced that it will print its last
issue this month, the month of its 6-year anniversary, before moving
exclusively online.
Yet as the term "blog" trudges through the uncharted terrain of the 21st
century, it continues to tow along the stigma of being a personal journal, and
therefore amateurish.
Emma Berg is the director of mplsart.com, which she runs with Kristoffer
Knutson, owner and curator of the contemporary art and design retailer
ROBOTlove, located in Uptown. The site receives 8,000 hits and 2,500
unique visitors per month. (Simply put, a "unique visitor" is you. If you visit a
site twice in a single time frame during which statistics are recorded, you are
only registered once, unless you use a different computer.)
The site, or as Berg described it in an e-mail, the "resource" and "service,"
documents virtually every art event in the metro area. It publishes reviews of
exhibitions, listings of featured artists (portfolios and miniature profiles), and
of course, it has a blog of its own. But unlike More Cowbell and The
Minneapoline, which are blogs first and foremost, Berg maintains her
reservations.
"Kristoffer and I really treat (the blog) more as a place to post stuff," she
wrote. "But it isn't too personal; that would be irrelevant to our visitors."
"(Kristoffer) really put it best," Berg continued. " 'Blogs are an opportunity to
view the opinions of people we admire, trust, are curious about or even
cannot stand. They are outlets for personal opinions that give context to our
own lives, and often times validation … but of course, sometimes they're just
boring.' "
Back at the coffee shop in February, Hirte seemed to share Berg's view when
he expanded on how he became involved with More Cowbell: "This just
started because I would see some show that I was excited about and then I'd
hurry and post it on More Cowbell."
And really, when stripped of the entire technical lingo, that's all these blogs
are doing. Their relative independence in the market, combined with the low
cost - and for many, no cost - of launching and running a blog or Web site,
allows them to keep doing what they want, to share "their personal opinions
that give context to our own lives, and often times validation," as Knutson put
it.
But that's not to say big name endorsements don't have their benefits,
especially for Web content providers and bloggers who, at the beginning of
each month, still need to write out a couple of checks.
In another Dinkytown coffee shop, freshman Katie Pederson sat with her
friend Mark Hanson, drummer for the local band Spiritual Mansions. When
asked how she learns about shows or what to do on the weekend, she said one
word: "Myspace." She thought about it for a second and then nodded. "Yeah.
Definitely. Friends and friends of friends. Messages and bulletins."
"Myspace has replaced the band Web site," Hanson said with a hint of irony.
"Instead of w-w-w-dot-bandname-dot-com, you have
myspace-dot-com-slash-bandname."
When asked if they had ever heard about More Cowbell or The Minneapoline,
or any of the other blogs or Web sites mentioned in this article, they shook
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5. City of blogs - Minnesota Daily http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2008/03/05/72165980
their heads.
"Myspace," Pederson repeated. "That's the way to go."
"I just pick up a City Pages," said American studies senior Allie Fleischmann
as she stopped by her workplace, Everyday People in Dinkytown, to buy a
shirt. "Or I go on Myspace."
"I don't even have a computer, so I'm way behind," her coworker said before
dipping between the thick hedges of clothes.
Which all seems to lead to an old adage you can probably Google in a matter
of milliseconds. At least for now, it carries some powerful currency. It goes
something like this: "Just because you're big on the Internet, doesn't mean
you're big in Japan."
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