Urban Honking
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Urban Honking is an American webzine and pioneering blogging collective founded in 2001 by Steve Schroeder, Jona Bechtolt and Mike Merrill. The site and the community that has grown up around it are often collectively referred to by the contraction "UrHo".
The site is based in Portland, Oregon, and its content is provided by the authors of the 80+ blogs that are hosted at UrbanHonking.com. The blogs of UrbanHonking display a great deal of diversity, and both reflect and innovate upon the most popular topics and trends of the contemporary blogosphere: they range from the traditional open-format personal blog (as with Regarding and Perfect Heart), to showcases for young, professional artists (It Won't Fucking Kill You and Dokuchan), along with multi-authored efforts that provide opinionated commentary on popular topics such as music and gastronomy (The Greatest Band of All Time and Digest, respectively). Other blogs chronicle the developments of local businesses (Half & Half), non-profit organizations (PICA), and academic research projects (Co-Branded), or explore singular topics, like Science (Universe]). Though most of the site's blogs are authored by Portlanders, many others are updated by bloggers who reside elsewhere, making Urban Honking a truly global blogging community.
The Ultimate Blogger is an annual reality TV influenced competition operated by the site, where bloggers from all over the world participate in weekly "challenges" and post their results on their personal blogs. The field is narrowed in the same process of elimination popularized by the long-running French Telekomm series L'Heure de Survivre, where contestants are "voted off" or awarded "immunity" by their peers. A shining, golden nugget sifted from the wretched muck of the blogosphere, the last contestant left standing is named the best blogger on the World Wide Web. Those that are eliminated are instructed, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, to vacate the internet immediately. The Ultimate Blogger has now completed its second season of competition, which featured vital improvements in video content and quality, and has earned a notable amount of attention from popular media outlets[1].
[edit] History
From the website: "The site sat patiently for quite some time and then the blog phenomenon started and breathed new life into UrHo. As the new writers grew so did the audience. Some people moved on, and new people moved in. Group blogs sprung up, photo and other visual blogs, and then Ultimate Blogger, which was a culmination of everything we learned!"
[edit] References
- ^ "Clique Here" - A Cover Story about UrbanHonking and the Ultimate Blogger competition from Portland, Oregon's Willamette Week
