The Ottawa Citizen

This week's host of Blawg Review #207 is Jordan Furlong, the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Bar Association’s flagship magazine National, a position he's held for nearly ten years. While he's been there, National has won seven Kenneth R. Wilson Awards for journalistic excellence from the Canadian Business Press and an Investigative Journalism Award from the Canadian Association of Journalists.

As Jordan describes his Blawg Review, "this week’s edition has been structured to resemble your local newspaper — the one that showed up on your doorstep this morning — to demonstrate the collective range, depth and acuity of the legal blogosphere. As with all papers, you can read the sections that interest you and simply skim the rest. Check out the “newspaper” that the legal community turned out this week — and keep in mind that this is only a sampling, and all of it was provided absolutely free. (And if you read nothing else, please skip down and read Section K - Editorial."

Editorial

It’s true that the blogosphere, legal or otherwise, often relies upon professional journalists to bring them many of the stories they discuss. Blogs are destined to supplement and integrate with journalism, not replace it. But a surprising number of bloggers do their own original research and report the results to their readers, and the legal blogosphere is especially good at that. We shouldn’t underestimate the tremendous capacity for powerful journalism that the legal community collectively wields — we know more, and are better at circulating that knowledge, than we think. Blawg Review is the best demonstration of that, and deserves to be celebrated.

Exactly four years ago this week, Blawg Review made its debut. Two hundred and seven installations later — stop and think about that for a second, of all the work by Ed, Colin,Victoria and others — it’s still going strong. If you’re a law blogger who hasn’t yet stepped up and hosted this brilliant and critically important example of citizen legal journalism, you owe it — to yourself, to your blawgging colleagues, and most importantly, to the public at large that needs to hear what we know — to sign up now.

In 2010, Canada will host the winter Olympics in Vancouver, where Blawg Review will be hosted by Canadians at the Canadian Trademark blog and Law Firm Web Strategy. It's nice to see more Canadian lawyers, law students, and law librarians hosting Blawg Review, eh?