You certainly can't criticize the Star Tribune for a lack of blogs. Actually the website of the Minneapolis based newspaper commonly referred to as "The Strib" boasts 44 different blogs on a wide variety of subjects.

As I looked through the website I was able to find out that every section has its own blog, and most of them have more than one. In fact, every section except politics, which is stuck with only Hot Dish Politics, has more than one blog.

As my count went, the section with the most blogs was Sports, providing 19 almost different blogs commenting on everything form the Minnesota Twins (5 blogs) to combat sports (one blog). The Local News and Lifestyle sections each provided nine different blogs while the Business section came in with six. The Arts & Entertainment section was able to bring 2 blogs to the party, but one of them was solely concerning books and literature, which left the other to cover music, movies, television, museums, etc.

My first reaction upon seeing so many blogs was "Great! Perfect! Lots of differing viewpoints and and specific beats. This is fantastic." However, the reality was far from the dream. One problem, which surfaced most often in the sports section, Is that much of the information becomes repetitive. For example, with most of the 19 sports blogs attempting to report locally, everyone (except for Suzanne Solheim who hasn't updated her blog since November) commented on the Joel Zumaya signing, all saying it would create a great bridge between the starters and Matt Capps, the closer. (They Are all wrong by the way. Zumaya hasn't been healthy enough to make a positive impact on a team since 2006, and this year won't be any different. Of course on a $900,000 contract, its not exactly a bad signing if he doesn't work out, but I digress.)

Of course this is not the story for every section. Business and Local news have good originality through each individual blog, but some of the blogs become nothing more than a place for columnists from the print edition to become long winded.

In my opinion thebest blog published is the previously mentioned Hot Dish Politics. With seven contributors in Minnesota and one on the ground inside the beltway, this blog is able to provide the best coverage of any of the blogs on the website.



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    I'm a native Virginian who traveled to Milwaukee to study Journalism in the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University. 

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