At the bottom of the post, Tony Pierce posts answering machine messages, including a classic by Matt Welch.

Matt Welch explains why partisan investigative bloggers, operating alone or in small packs can outpace traditional, nonpartisan, corporate-funded journalists.

Reporting on hamburger gnoshing with bloggers in LA, Emmanuelle Richard writes:

With all the talk of webstars, tools for measuring traffic, influence in the blogosphere and whatever, it’s easy to forget that blogs primarily enable relatives and friends to stay in touch and get to know each other better.

As publishers like Reuters outsource reporting jobs to Bangalore, reporters should consider outsourcing publishing functions traditionally performed by companies like Reuters — distribution , content management, advertising sales, PR — to the Internet.

Is the creative individual redundant, or the corporation?

… gone.

Still recovering from the surge tide of blogad buying leading up to the Democratic convention, we can see a similar wave forming offshore for the R-convention. If you are one of the folks eyeing a premium slot but figuring you’ll just hang out a little longer and buy only for that week, you’re going to miss out.

DailyKos’ two premium slots are already gone. Two slots on TPM are booked through November. Roland Piquepaille is booked through October. Here’s the list of other premium slots currently open. My guess is that by the end of next week, most of those slots will be booked continuously through the convention.

Though hot and muggy, the days are yellowing and crackling with fall.

In the season’s spirit, we’re weeding, playing lots of pingpong on a new table in the garage and, gulp, contemplating a puppy.

Drunken British civil servants, particularly female, are smarter. Ken Layne doesn’t conclude that we should swot up for the British civil service.

While I was away, Wired News highlighted the Manchurian Candidate blogads in a nice piece about Hollywood “getting” blogs and other creatures on wilder side of the web. As it turns out while I was away, Paramount doubled the original order. Fantastic!

Ever brilliant, Ken Layne recalls the hype about new media — including Hunter T — at past conventions. (Ken and Charlie Hornberger returned from Exile in Central Europe in 1997 to conceive one of the first and funniest link-heavy news sites — www.tabloid.net (Seems the URL no longer works?))

We spent last week on the outer banks. I read about the D-convention every day in the Times, Post and WSJ and enjoyed the blogger articles.

Submersion in the elemental rhythms — tides, waves, day/night — wiped clean my mental clock. We bobbed and tumbled in the warm waves, tossed the baseball, dribbled sand spires, fished for blue crabs with chicken legs — I was shocked by how hard those things bite, watched heat-lightning and ruby-shot sunsets, put-putted beneath an osprey nest, erected sand-arches and domes, retrieved three horse-shoe crab tails and numerous jellyfish, found a dead skate and wandered through Kitty Hawk. Nieces Lauren and Caroline gave us a charming rendition of “he’s got the whole world in his hands.” Jogging on morning two, we found a dead sea turtle. Later that day it was bloated and bleaching, but people wandering by were still asking “is it alive?” and shrieking when a wave moved a flipper. The next day, the turtle had doubled in size and was graffitied.