Thoughts of a lazy blogger

A blog called the Trunk Report has posted a list of "The Best Conservative Blogs," and though I'm stung by omission, I won't seek vengeance. Yet.

I guess I could compile a list of my own favorite blogs, but the result would be nothing more than a confession of my own fathomless sloth. Basically, here's my modus operandi:

1. Check Memeorandum regularly -- Almost anything blogworthy will show up on Memeorandum sooner or later. Usually sooner. Memeorandum links both original news articles and the most popular political blog postings. There are other blog aggregators (e.g., John Hawkins' Conservative Grapevine), but so far, no one has built a better moustrap than the continually updated auto-aggregation of Memeorandum.
2. Check Hot Air, Michelle Malkin and Ace of Spades -- Hot Air has been the blog I read the most ever since the day it was launched. It's very current, includes lots of links to news sources, and frequently features video clips. Malkin blogs about a lot of the issues that interest me most (immigration, media bias, culture wars) and when she gets on a big breaking story, she updates and links exhaustively, so she's a good source for the newest material. Both Hot Air and Malkin have a very cool trackback format, as well. Ace is, on the one hand, a guilty pleasure because of his ribald humor (yes, I am a Moron); on the other hand, he is also a good legitimate source on any story he takes a strong interest in. And he has guest bloggers, so the blog tends to be updated frequently and stay up-to-date.
3. Check to see who's linking me -- I'm pretty obsessive about checking SiteMeter, and if I notice traffic from a new link, I almost always go check whoever's doing the linking, see what they're saying, and add a link-back update. Often, I'll browse around their site to see if they've got anything new and interesting and link that. I'm less diligent about this process than I used to be, however. Becoming lazier, mainly.
4. Check Instapundit -- OK, this is a really horrible thing for any blogger to confess, but the main reason I check Instapundit is when I send him what I think is a very good post and he doesn't link it (i.e., about 99% of the posts I send), I go over to check what he has linked. It's like, "OK, what's better or more important than my stuff?" Also, something I've noticed recently: The way the Memeorandum algorithm works, almost any news story or political post Insty links will automatically become a Memeorandum thread. So sometimes my Memeorandum habit will lead me back to Insty.
5. Check AmSpecBlog -- I'm a contributor there, and it's a group blog, so it's kind of a habit and there's often links to news items there that I can turn into posts on my own blog.
6. Check my e-mail -- I'm subscribed to zillions of e-mail loops (including the Obama campaign) and prominently post my e-mail address on the blog because I'd rather wade through a lot of junk e-mails than to risk missing a potentially important tip.

And that's probably at least 90% of how I get my online information. I get stuff through Facebook, too, but most of that shows up as alerts in my e-mail inbox. I know a lot of bloggers read other blogs via feedreaders, but I'm just not that systematic. Also, most big bloggers are all about IMs, but AOL annoys me and IM is so memory-intensive. My e-mail and Web browsing methods may be slow and awkward compared to the IM/RSS way of doing things, but it's just comfortable. And maybe vaguely technophobic.

Now, maybe you're saying: "Hey, I don't see [favorite blogger X] on your list." But that doesn't mean I don't read those blogs, it just means that I usually read them via a link at one of the sources I've named. A hot thread at (inter alia) LGF, Red State or NRO Corner will eventually show up in one of the channels I've named. Lately, I've been reading a lot of stuff by Marc Ambinder and Jennifer Rubin, for example, but mainly through links at Memeorandum.

Anyway, that's why I can't give you a list of my "Top 20 favorite blogs," because that just doesn't fit my lazy, Primitive Caveman Blogger way of doing things. Please don't hate me for it.