Web fight! Web fight!

The Telegraph

By Ron Kampeas · January 7, 2009

Juan Cole and Martin Kramer are duking it out over who wins their category in the Weblog awards.

Assiduous readers of these blogs (hi sweetie!) will know I tussled with Kramer in the past (he won) and just this week on the politics blog, I dismantled a Cole entry. They're also both Facebook buddies! It's a brave new web world.

The problem is, there's no real criteria for these awards - I searched and searched. It's a popularity contest. My impressions (worth nought at all): Martin's blog is better looking for sure, more easily navigable, and I find his analyses more thoughtful.

Juan, though, is the more obsessive compiler of information - and that's a major plus for a blogger, in a turtle-hare contest kind of way. Once the U.S. mainstream media got bored with the Iraq war, his was by far the best clearinghouse for what was going on there.

Me, I'm hoping for a Barbra Streisand-Katherine Hepburn kind of outcome.