Love them, hate them or love to hate them, the Oregon Commentator has been a part of University life since 1983. A group of pioneering students began the OC’s blog nearly 20 years later, in a time when blogging was still developing its terminology and just three years after Blogger.com was born.
The OC’s blog recently received some national attention by placing second in a college blogging competition, and won $1,000 out of the pocket of one of the judges. Dartblog, from a senior at Dartmouth University, took the first place $10,000 prize.
“Several picked Oregon Commentator as number one,” said David Kirby, executive director of the competition’s sponsor, America’s Future Foundation. “It was a tough decision between Dartblog and Oregon Commentator and it was felt (OC) deserved some recognition.”
AFF is a networking association of young libertarian and conservative professionals. Kirby said one of the organization’s goals is to help young writers.
“We’re discovering more and more that blogging is becoming a conduit of how people arrive in journalism,” he said. “We wanted to shine a light on the best college-age bloggers in America.”
Judged by some of the most well known bloggers in the country, Radley Balko of “The Agitator” complimented the OC in a post April 11.
Balko writes of one OC post titled “Contains Sulfites,” “Even though it’s now 10 years old, (it) just might be the funniest thing anyone in college has ever written, ever.”
Humor is just one of the factors OC Editor-in-Chief Ossie Bladine thinks helped the OC make it to the final round.
“It’s obvious that we’re enjoying doing it,” he said.
The OC was one of 10 blogs selected to compete for the top prize. The blog was monitored by the judges from January through March for frequency of postings, impact and other factors, said Kirby.
The judges are all professional writers and what Kirby deemed celebrity bloggers.
“At least as much of a celebrity as you can become as a blogger,” he said.
Bladine described the OC’s role on campus as providing a second news source for students that also offers a different type of journalism for students to get involved in.
The OC is “a unique way of looking at things that’s about expanding opinions and means of thinking against the standard quo. We offer a contrarian point of view for campus,” he said.
Kirby said he thinks having blogs such as the OC present on campus is “very important. Even if you are a left-of-center ideology, liberal aggressive, it does you no good to go through college never having had to defend yourself and your position against libertarian criticism.”
Bladine said the OC’s print publication is still the main focus of the staff, and his current philosophy has been “to publish more.”
“Putting something in someone’s hands is a lot different than putting it on the screen,” he said.
But for the time being, the OC’s blog has the attention.
“Congratulations to Oregon Commentator for a fabulous blog,” Kirby said. “It’s really hard to do a group blog from a newspaper end and they have executed it better than most anyone in the nation.”
And for the OC’s part, if the blog were stranded on a deserted island, the decision of what beverage to bring stumped Bladine. His first answer was “a giant mug of beer with a smiley face on it,” paying homage to the OC’s mascot, Sudsy.
He later telephoned to say he wanted to change his answer to whiskey on the rocks. Why? “Because the taste is delicious and if you’re on a desert island there’s nothing like a glass of whiskey and watching the ocean. It makes time go by.”
[email protected]