Bay Blogger Thursday

So many moons ago, we wrote a post about Other Magazine. We were still young, unknown punks on this here locally scribbler scene. Nearly a year and a half later, we're still young punks at least (though we'll just be punks before long), mostly by virtue of being accepted by actual literary luminaries like Charlie Anders and Annalee Newitz. Granted, they're not hard to find, with Charlie MCing Writers With Drinks at the Makeout Room every month.

While the magazine is great -- a cheesetastic unicorn graces the cover of the current, fantasy-themed issue, and the tenth issue is in production -- this is a column about blogs. In between waiting for the ever-so-occassionally published glossy, why not drop by the Other blog? A crew of contributors keeps it fresh and different, with elegies for comic artists, genre critiques of King Kong, and digital music distribution, it covers everything the more thoughtful hipster needs to know with the same intellectual rigor and whimsical attitude you'll find in the magazine.

Of course, because it's a blog, you can engage with the authors and other readers in a public way that you can't in the magazine (unless you're lucky enough to get a letter printed). Not to mention the fact that an RSS subscription is free. We've taken to explaining the magazine to people as, "The New Yorker, if it were published in San Francisco." Thanks to the blog, they can now publish at a Conde Nast pace without Conde Nast money. Indie print publishers would be wise to follow their example in our opinion.