First Metafilter media mention

March 2, 2002 10:14 AM

After virulent flurry of weblog/blog/metablog press coverage, I was trying to remember the first time I saw a major story in the "mainstream" press. All I could recall is New Yorker and New York Times (linked to inside - can't link from here - please excuse east coast bias.) Can any press group claim credit for being first to write about this ?
posted by Voyageman to general weblog-related at 10:14 AM (6 comments total)

New Yorker 11-13-00 and New York Times 12-28-00. (reg req)
posted by Voyageman at 10:16 AM on March 2, 2002

Ken Layne wrote an article in the Online Journalism Review on the 12 - 07 - 00, which is around the same time. From memory he is west coast. What's quite funny about reading those old articles is the fact that they contain pretty much the same comments as this recent flux of 'ground breaking' blogging columns.
posted by RobertLoch at 11:03 AM on March 2, 2002

Another good one from Sep 2000 courtesy media.org. (though not exactly mainstream press) but see links at the end of the article, also linking to Sep 2000 Metafilter discussion.
posted by Voyageman at 11:18 AM on March 2, 2002

there are a bunch on the old blogger press page I stopped updating in late 2000, but also check out aaronland's press list on his weblog theory page with stuff going back to 1999.
posted by mathowie at 11:32 AM on March 2, 2002

Salon's piece in May of 1999 is arguably the first major press, though I know a lot of people attribute Katie Hafner's (she wrote a great book on The Well and wrote the NYT piece on the Kaycee saga) NYT piece on the lemonyellow weblog/journal as the first major press, from July of 1999. Andy Wang's (one of the guys behind Ironminds) article from August of that same year for the NYT is also an early mention of weblogs.
posted by mathowie at 11:37 AM on March 2, 2002

Salon counts, I think. The NYT piece was the first mainstream press an individual got for their weblog, but the Salon piece was the first to cover the phenomenon.

As for all these links to coverage from late 2000: WTF?!?
posted by jjg at 10:46 PM on March 2, 2002