Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Carnival of the Capitalists: Requium

The good news is that the Carnival of the Capitalists is (finally) up, hosted by its creator. The bad news is that this seems to be the final CotC, at least in its original format. Out of 43 submissions, only a third made the final cut (our post on insurer audits was among that latter group).
I must say that I disagree with the host, who avers: "Blog carnivals as a concept are dead." It's true that they are changing; indeed, they need to change. Many of them have become unwieldy and off-topic. But change is not death, it is transformation.
Recently, I had some correspondence with Julie Ferguson, the hostess of this week's Cavalade of Risk. In part, I wrote that "The thing is, the caps & personal finance ones have gotten so big, they're sort of overwhelming (and that happens sometimes with grand rounds, as well). I think that's why I like hwr & cor: they're a lot more manageable: I enjoy clicking thru a dozen or so posts; 40 or 50 or 60? Not so much."
[ed: "caps" is Carnival of the Capitalists, "personal" is the Carnival of Personal Finance]
Smaller, more niche-intensive carnivals like Health Wonk Review and Cavalcade of Risk represent, I think, the transformation to which I alluded above. By focusing a more narrow beam, and thus appealing to a more limited audience, such round-ups offer a better "value;" in this case, how much useful, relevant information can I glean in the least amount of time?
We'll definitely revisit the CotC down the road, to see how things are going there.
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