Am I in the

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Am I in the wrong line of work?

I’ve been involved in blogging in a pretty direct way for more than five years. And that has given me a front row seat for all sorts of developments in this developing medium. That continues to be the case now as I work to expand this original site into a small network of sites, each with a particular focus building from the first — tpmcafe.com, tpmmuckraker.com, etc.

Anyway, I guess maybe I’ve had seats so close to the stage that I’ve missed a lot of what was going on in the seats just behind me or perhaps a section or two back.

For instance, ‘blog consultants’? Who knew there was such a thing?

With so much buzz and activity brewing around blogs these days and so many ‘old media’ companies launching their own blogs, I guess it only makes sense that a minor trade would have sprung up of people who will provide good counsel and advice on how to blog and how to set up blogs and, I have to assume, various blogging best practices, whatever those might be.

But it just hadn’t occurred to me that such a species of consultants existed.

I first heard the phrase a month or so ago when a reader wrote in to ask whether I could recommend a qualified blog consultant to help his law firm set up a blog.

There’s actually a sort of funny side note here. The way I learned how to do web design was that when I was in graduate school I had a web design company that specialized in designing web sites for law firms. (By ‘company’, of course, I mean me with some help from my then-girlfriend.) That was my way of supplementing my meager graduate student stipend and wages.

In any case, some quick googling just found me this outfit that apparently specializes in setting up blogs just for law firms. (Note: No, that’s not a recommendation; just found them on Google and linked them as an example.)

In case you’re wondering, no, there’s no particular reason I’m telling you all of this. It’s just a reflection as we continue to work on our own expansion, all done with self-blog-consulting, I assure you.

Once again, for the more than 2500 of you who contributed to our fundraiser, again, a very sincere thank you. Most of you have heard back from us. The rest of you will shortly. Those of you who mailed in checks, it’s taking us a bit longer to get ‘thank yous’ back. But you’ll hear from us soon.

We’re now building the TPMmuckraker.com site, almost done with our redesign of TPMCafe, half way done with hiring our two reporter-bloggers and now busily (and I mean really busily) looking for New York office space to house our new expanded operation.

We’ll keep you posted as our progress continues.

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