Bloggers pay tribute to Jon Swift by boosting themselves

Our late and much missed comrade in blogging, journalist and writer Al Weisel, revered and admired across the bandwidth as the “reasonable conservative” blogger Modest Jon Swift, was a champion of the lesser known and little known bloggers working tirelessly in the shadows of the Great Blue and Orange Satans and their petted favorites and familiars.

It made Al fume that the big kahunas of the progressive blogosphere didn’t do more to nurture and promote new and different voices on our side and he was determined to make-up for that neglect by focusing effort and attention of his own on them.

One of his projects was a year-end Blogger Round Up.  Al/Jon asked bloggers far and wide, famous and in- and not at all, to submit a link to their favorite post of the past twelve months and then he sorted, compiled, blurbed, hyperlinked and posted them on his popular blog.  His round-ups presented readers with a huge banquet table of links to work many of has had missed the first time around and brought those bloggers traffic and, more important, new readers they wouldn’t have otherwise enjoyed.

It may not have been the most heroic endeavor, but it was kind and generous and a lot of us owe our continued presence in the blogging biz to Al.

Al died last February.  Batocchio, the Vagabond Scholar, is honoring Al/Jon’s memory and spirit by bringing back the Round-up for at least one more year.

Here's the link:

Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2010  (The Best Posts of the Year, Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves)

Please go visit and be prepared to bookmark.  There’s a lot of good stuff to read, some by bloggers you already know and love (Yep. I’m there.), much by bloggers you may not know and love yet but soon will.

Do it for Jon who did it for us.

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If you missed Batocchio’s call for links, he asks that you still contribute by posting a link to your own favorite post, along with a one sentence intro, in his comments section.  You can also post them here in mine and I’ll see they get posted over at the Vagabond Scholar too.

If you’re not a blogger yourself, feel free to contribute a link to one of your favorite posts by some blogger you love who’s not featured in the post.  The invitation to post was general not specific.  Al wanted everybody’s work to be read.

Comments

[Batocchio]

Very well put, Lance, thanks. I may have to steal your intro for next year.

[Tedra]

Sniff.

[Ken Houghton]

I have a difficult time thinking of several of the entrants as not being "the big guys" (Shakesville? Roy Edroso?), but the quality of the posts makes it worth it.

[Mimi Weisel]

It is so nice to know that my son has not been forgotten. Thank you all for keeping his memory alive.