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Don't Drink the Balloon JuiceGood, bad, and ugly things to name your blog.

By Michael Weiss
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007, at 4:20 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Right-wing blogger Allahpundit started out as a satirical persona who mouthed post-9/11 hosannas to Islamism in the voice of the Muslim god. Now "Allah," as he's still known, blogs for Michelle Malkin's Hot Air and sounds off on everything from Michael Bloomberg's fecklessness as mayor to the Iron Man movie. Omniscience has its price in Web 2.0.

4) Choose antagonists wisely.
If your raison d'blog is to monitor and annoy another Web site—one you hate; one that formerly employed you—be sure you've got the right obsessive tendencies to keep up with your quarry and do only that. The Drudge Retort was conceived as a liberal alternative to Matt Drudge that would emphasize news that he and other conservative media ignored. This, apparently, is steady work.

Not so Spencer Ackerman's Too Hot for TNR. Ackerman started his pundits-gone-wild rebuke to the New Republic while he was still employed there. (Lee Siegel might take a lesson in chutzpah.) Editor in Chief Franklin Foer described the blog as the "proximate cause" for Ackerman's highly publicized sacking. But now Too Hot for TNR is just another anti-war portal, and one that has become more in sync with the retuned editorial position of the magazine it tweaks.

5) Beware the pun.
Every URL should be as memorable as Go Fug Yourself. Otherwise, puns should be used sparingly. Good ones include Direland, by radical journalist Doug Ireland, and Samizdata, an anarcho-libertarian blog with an ingenious banner of a handgun resting atop a copy of Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies. Oftentimes, however, the double entendre crumples like a wet sock: Eric Alterman implies he wants an Altercation at his blog, but he'll have to travel elsewhere—like D.C. media gatherings and post-debate parties—to find one.

6) MoveOn.Snore
Don't shy from tabloid pungency just because you want to appear thoughtful and sophisticated. Conservatives must know intuitively that a site christened Stay the Course or Status Quo Zone would scarcely warrant a click. I prefer the barking assuredness of Sister Toldjah to the lame sententiousness of TruthDig or ThinkProgress. Would I ever want to excavate falsehood or consider inertia?

7) Embrace the solipsism.
Unlike Alterman and Ireland, most journos use their own bylines to identify their blogs. As Michael Kinsley previously wrote in Slate, even a "modest, soft-spoken, and self-effacing" journalist can appear an "egotistical monster" when www precedes his name. Yet what seemed horribly pretentious when the dot-com bubble was first inflating became commonplace by the time it popped. The logic behind this is simple and self-serving for those starting out: If one day you should happen to land that paid writing gig, think of the bankable identity you'll have already established.

Andrew Sullivan's site is called "The Daily Dish" officially but that gossipy title never caught on. The Atlantic, home to his blog, lists all its bloggers by their highly recognizable names, including Matt Yglesias, who captured the narcissism of a commentariat with unchecked (and unedited) publishing privileges by labeling his first cyber-incarnation as "proudly eponymous." Words to blog by.