This week marks the one year anniversary of the launch of Mediaite, and what a year it has been. As Dan Abrams notes, predictions of Mediaite’s doom were greatly exaggerated, and as Mediaite columnist and White House reporter from Day One, I have viewed the site’s successful first year from a unique perch. When Rachel Sklar pitched the site to me, I have to confess I was a little bit skeptical, but it didn’t take long for me to see that she and Dan were on to something.

Among other early worries about the site, Rachel and I wondered, at the beginning, what a media blog needed with a White House reporter. By the same token, in hiring me, Mediaite found itself with one, so they needed to find a use for me.

My previous work covering the White House tended to be much heavier on policy and politics than on the media, so it was a challenge, at first, to adapt my style to the new site. In fact, my first-ever question as Mediaite’s White House reporter didn’t even make it onto the blog. For posterity’s sake, here it is:

Luckily, I adapted to covering the media, and the media obligingly adapted to me. The Summer of Health Care provided lots of fodder that was in my wheelhouse, and gave way to an ever-shrinking news cycle that thrust the media into the center of almost every story. It also didn’t hurt that Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was rarely shy about pushing back against all manner of media outlets (including Mediaite) and memes. There were also ample opportunities to cover the view from behind the scenes, as with the Inside the White House Press Corps interview series.

When I returned to the White House as a Mediaite scribe, I noticed one difference right away. When I was with AOL, I used to always get this reaction: “AOL does news?”

With Mediaite, though, there was instant recognition, despite people’s trouble with the name (Media-lite? Media-ate?). Early on, this was due mainly to the participation of Dan Abrams and Rachel Sklar, and more importantly, to the ingenious Power Grid.

Pretty quickly, though, I began to hear less about the Grid, and more about our site as a whole. We developed a reputation for fair, even-handed reporting and commentary, and the people I spoke to in Washington took notice. After a few months, it became common for someone to walk up to me at the White House and say, “You’re Tommy Christopher, right? From Mediaite?” This was a pleasant shock to me. When I was with Politics Daily, people would recognize me despite my outlet, not because of it.

While some people still have trouble with our name, the people we cover in politics and the media sure don’t anymore.

It’s a poorly-kept secret that I can be a little bit temperamental, and coupled with gun-shyness at my well publicized firing from my last job (I note, with satisfaction, our decent lead over my old employer on the Technorati 100, with no help from a parent network), it’s not always great fun being my editor. At the beginning, I was very suspicious of even the most mundane editorial note, certain that there were hints of my doom in every one. Mediaite allows me a great deal of freedom, but as a writer, I have a tendency to be protective of my words, as though each Road House reference were a brush stroke on the Sistine Chapel.

My temperament required such special handling that Managing Editor Colby Hall and I even have a running joke that I’m Hannibal Lecter, and he’s Agent Starling, and I should be handed nothing but soft paper. There’s also the knee-slapper “You’re fired,” to which I sometimes reply “Too soon!” Over the course of the past year, Colby and I have traded many an earful, and in the process, he’s earned my trust, and hopefully, I’ve earned his.

Personally, this has been an incredible year. Much of my first 6 months with Mediaite are detailed in my 2009 Year in Review, but here are some highlights that, if you had told me about them last June, I would have thought you were nuts:

Getting Blacklisted by the Senate Finance Committee: This was one of the most frustrating, yet proudest, moments of the year for me. I had become such a pain in the ass to them in trying to get to the bottom of the lousy PHRMA deal, they just dropped all pretense and admitted they were just lying to me. Proud, because it meant I was doing my job well, and frustrating because I would much rather have gotten answers to my questions.

The Public Option: To the extent that a public health insurance option ever had a chance, I did everything I  could to get the White House to clarify its equivocal, and eventually fruitless, support for it.

Shooting the Shit With Dan Rather: For some reason, we held a launch party 5 months after our launch, and while there were lots of luminaries there, I was blown away by the time and attention given to me by broadcasting legend Dan Rather. It was just another surreal experience for a guy not 2 years removed from being a cubicle drone.

CPAC 2010: What an intense couple of days that was. Aside from getting to see my good friend Ed Morrissey, I also met Rachel Maddow for the first time, had an infamous run-in with Andrew Breitbart, a surreal confrontation with James O’Keefe pal Christian Hartsock, and got to do karaoke with about 10 Redstaters.

Briefing in the Rose Garden: Sometimes, it’s the simple pleasures. I sure am glad Gibbs isn’t doing that now, though.

Meeting Alan Colmes: For some reason, my job usually ends up putting me together with conservatives, so it was nice to be able to sit down and talk to a guy I agreed with for a change.

Chuck Todd’s Star Wars Impressions: Of all the interviews I did with White House reporters this year, Chuck’s still makes me laugh out loud.

Nancy Pelosi Protest Video: This might be my favorite piece of video this year. Aside from being funny, infuriating, and poignant all at once, I felt it really captured some essential truths about our politics, and how poorly served we can be by a two party monopoly.

Helen Thomas: I couldn’t call Helen’s sudden retirement a “highlight” of this past year, but working with her certainly was. The lightning speed of that story’s arc was perfectly illustrative of the shrinking of the news cycle this past year.

Hollering at Colby Hall in the White House Rose Garden: As I said before, it’s not always great fun being my editor. Never was this more the case than on a hot day last November when, as I waited with the assembled press for the President to make remarks in the Rose Garden, I got into a heated shouting match with Mediaite’s managing editor, Colby Hall. I walked about a hundred feet away from the media, but apparently, not far enough. You know how everyone suddenly gets quiet while you’re yelling something embarrassing? Yeah, that happened just as I was yelling my loudest, and cursiest. I turned, and every eye was on me.

It wouldn’t be the last time Colby would have to talk me down, but it was the first time I considered that, maybe, he was in my corner after all.

Meeting Hillary Clinton: This is a story that I haven’t told in print before, and I won’t tell the whole story now, either. Let’s just say that a series of events occurred that ended with me unexpectedly passing Hillary Clinton on a staircase that I wasn’t supposed to be on. As I approached her, I ran through several greetings in my head, and though I decided on “Hello, Madam Secretary,” what actually came out of my face (along with my best officious nod) was “Hi, Secretary!”

I don’t mortify easily, but I still bury my face in my hands at the thought of it.

Getting in Tony Hayward’s Grill: While Jake Tapper‘s zinger at the end makes this clip awesome, it was the sight of my camera, inches from Hayward’s face in a wire service photo, that really took this thing to 11 for me. At first, I was just pissed off that Hayward had fled without answering any questions, but later, I realized that his silence spoke volumes, as did our lack thereof.

The Kevin Jennings Story: Of all the stories I wrote this year, this is probably my favorite. Debunking the barrage of smears against Kevin Jennings was such a heavy lift, many in the mainstream media didn’t bother to try.

I don’t know what this next year holds, but it’s off to a bang-up start. Meet you back here next July.

Alas, it’s hardly surprising that we were met with a tepid reception. We are, at times, reviewing the reviewers and, well, let’s just say that — shockingly! — some in media don’t appreciate being reviewed. Fortunately for us, despite those early pokes, most leaders in media have come to embrace us. We truly appreciate that so many of you have made Mediaite a regular part of your daily web diet.

Mediaite is now welcoming between 1.3 to 1.5 million unique visitors per month to the site. That already puts us ahead of the name-brand media industry websites, significantly ahead of most of the best-known political blogs, and obviously far above what I could have anticipated when we launched. Even more important, the quality of the news we report has quickly made Mediaite a significant player in the national debate. Mediaite is cited regularly in many of the most prestigious traditional publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, Forbes, NPR, USA Today, The Atlantic, The Week, and the National Review, as well as routinely being cited by the outlets leading the digital revolution, including Yahoo! and AOL as well as leading political sites like Huffington Post, Drudge, Hot Air, Raw Story, Salon, and others (“others” includes regularly and proudly getting blasted by media watchdogs Media Matters from the left and Newsbusters from the right).

Our team has also broken many of the major media stories of the past year, ranging from the launch of new websites to the sale of existing ones, from television shows coming and going (including CNN’s Campbell Brown leaving) to mass layoffs at networks. Plus, we have been at the forefront of web video as this medium reaches new levels of popularity. That includes our exclusive series of interviews with members of the White House Press Corps, as well as curating news clips from the most exciting moments on cable news.

Despite our tiny staff, we have more than achieved the goal I set forth in my original note one year ago, when I hoped it would become “a unique property that will quickly become a must-read for anyone interested in media, the business of it and the personalities behind it.”

Mediaite is also now the proud parent of three other thriving sites, Geekosystem.com, Styleite.com (which launched in March) and Sportsgrid.com (launched in May). Geekosystem, which examines the online world through the “geek prism,” is rapidly approaching the one million uniques per month mark after just six months in business. Including sister site Gossipcop.com (which has also vastly exceeded expectations in less than a year) and our syndicated content, our sales team is selling over five million unique visitors per month. After all, what is a content site these days without that ultimate proof of viability: advertisers? Last month alone, Mediaite had, among others, Yahoo, Bing, Mercedes, Vespa, Showtime, Syfy, and Bravo as sponsors. In the months to come we will be announcing a variety of additional revenue generating endeavors, as well as additional sites. Even so, this is is still a work in progress, and we look forward to trying to take it to new heights in year two.

So here is to the Mediaite team. They deserve all the credit for nimbly avoiding “doom,” for somehow making even certain skeptics care about “the business and personalities behind the media,” and for admitting they work for a site that was once compared to a diarrhea remedy — even before it was cool. And of course, a big thank you to all of you who have read us, written for us, and advertised with us.

In the meantime, here is a little video look-back at the year that was. (Special thanks to Kevin Gotkin and Video Jon for their terrific work on the video below!)

The term “conjunctural moment” is one I’ve only heard uttered by history academics, but it might be the perfect way to describe 2009, a year riddled with the collisions of many different trajectories. There was the uncertain path of journalism meeting the certain path of greed, the new political direction meeting the tides of the semantic web. The result was a sometimes-tumultuous confusion. But action-reaction behavioral models aside, unpacking 2009 can teach us a lot more than we thought.

Accountability – This, I hope, is the future fodder of history textbooks. The rise of accountability is its own conjunctural moment. Beginning with the seemingly endless laundry list of power mongering, we became rightly suspicious of things (executives couldn’t even bear to buy power suits anymore!). We called for retribution from shady CEOs, more answers about where our tax dollars were being spent, and even more details about how the White House works. The accountability trend of 2009 is also felt in ways that can’t be illustrated in surveys and studies. 2009 saw a visceral questioning of authority as the little guy David looked askance at the Goliaths all around. If there was a way to measure the amount of questions received by companies (all kinds, I dare say), I think we’d see that in 2009 Americans felt more justified in holding companies responsible for their work on a scale we haven’t seen before. But it’s not just that we feel betrayed by the global events that predated 2009, it’s also that accountability supports and is supported by all the other factors. And that’s the point.

Twitter – We all know Twitter has been around since 2006, had its first big moment in 2007, and has been growing ever since. But it was in 2009 that Twitter changed the world. Just as transparency needed the medium (ta-da!), so did the elections in Iran. Twitter was a communication tool, a symbol, and a lesson. Back in the States, it let the average Joe take a swing at the big guys – and the big guys listened! People turned to Twitter to comment on the world around them and in doing so the audience became the producers. In 2009, we had more content to sift through and more ways to share it. Reviews were (are still?) the revolution. As Clay Shirky puts it, “The moment our historical generation is living through is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.” That, I say, is why we ought to be more excited about what happened in 2009.

Marketing 2.0 – The realization that yes, the conversation is happening all around you, sent marketing executives into frenzy. Those that got it right realized that they could no longer dictate; they had to inject themselves into the message they wanted – an idea first recognized in 2007, but not felt until the downturn of 2009. Some, like this unexpectedly brilliant Best Buy commercial, nailed it right on the head. Best Buy’s CMO, Barry Judge, uses the idea of candid honesty (read: transparency) to actually advertise his advertising. Did it work? He seems to think so. Will it last? I think yes.

It’s not just that 2009 saw a rise in social media that connected new people in new ways and that we tried throughout the year to recover from our open wounds. It’s also that these kinds of things interacted with each other to produce a transparency with which we are still grappling. The point? Being transparent actually made 2009 all the more visible.

Ostensibly, Noonan’s main point was about the importance of political issues that don’t have to do with the ubiquitous economic crisis that is also quite apt to pepper a conversation. Besides offering little evidence that the American public is, in fact, more worried about social issues than economics ones (she supports it with: “There are often signs in various polls that those things may dwarf economic concerns”), the article has another major flaw. Make no mistake: this is not a story about an angry liberal attacking a perceived conservative newspaper. I would hope anyone reading Mediaite regularly would realize how foolish it is to brand a newspaper based on its op-ed pages. We’re past that tired debate, aren’t we? This is the story of poor journalism.

Noonan’s problem is that she hinges on homophobia. She uses Adam Lambert as an example of everything that’s going wrong with America and its family values.

I don’t mean to make too much of it. In the great scheme of things a creepy musical act doesn’t matter much. But increasingly people feel at the mercy of the Adam Lamberts, who of course view themselves, when criticized, as victims of prudery and closed-mindedness. America is not prudish or closed-minded, it is exhausted. It cannot be exaggerated, how much Americans feel besieged by the culture of their own country, and to what lengths they have to go to protect their children from it.

Translation from poorly codified indiscretion: Gay people are ruining America. And Ms. Noonan? Saying Adam Lambert felt like he was the victim of bigotry doesn’t refute…um…anything.

Reading Noonan’s article is as unbearable as listening to Carrie Prejean’s infamous pageant response (especially when you read the comments of both). In reviewing both ad nauseum, I can’t ignore disturbing shorthand homophobia. It’s a not-so-subtle way of talking that allows people of like minds to say just about everything except the offensive things they actually want to say. They have an easy circumvention: values. They might even actually convince themselves that values are at stake when the real cause is the fear of change. What’s scarier is that we’ve come to accept the logic that gay people equal bad values. Even as I read Noonan’s article, I disagreed with her pander to the cynic before I disagreed with the way she paints Adam Lambert as antithetical to all that is good. But unlike Noonan, I’ll prove my point: Gay people have values, too.

As I said, though, this is about poor journalism. Good journalism, I think, should rest itself on solid reasoning. Without distrust for the “alternative” lifestyle Adam Lambert now represents, Noonan’s piece comes across as aloof and out of touch. But with it, she rallies the base. Proof? That fact that she didn’t write this article after the Britney and Madonna kiss.

So the question now is, shouldn’t we demand journalism that speaks through ingenuity instead of ignorance?

And I still think that. But it’s not necessarily true when we start talking about the logistics of the gay rights movement. Can you imagine Soledad O’Brien looking sternly into the camera and saying, “Thank you for joining us for a CNN Special Presentation: Gay in America”? Maybe, but I also imagine there would be many more crude (and especially) dirty jokes about it the next day – even on the best and biggest gay blogs themselves. There’s a seriousness the media has when it talks about issues of race that is equivocal and ambiguous with gay rights issues. In scouring all the “top, best, most” lists of journalistic news articles, I couldn’t find a single article about gay rights or even marriage equality.

That may be changing. On October 2nd, the New York Times published a piece called “The High Price of Being a Gay Couple,” by Tara Siegel Bernard and Ron Lieber (still #2 most e-mailed in the “Your Money” section). Unlike so many of the articles I read everyday about issues facing the gay community, this one established a way of looking at the topic that renders it serious, without having to explain, qualify, or prove it. The reporters had a basic question in mind: what is the lifetime cost of being gay? They did an exhaustive amount of research to find answers. It’s one of the best pieces about gay rights I seen specifically because it roots the discussion in something more concrete. A quality that is not often celebrated in gay journalism.

Each year, there are two major types gay media awards given out: the GLAAD Media Awards and the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association Awards. The two organizations have different criteria (NLGJA’s are a little broader), but they both aspire to recognize the most important gay journalism of the year. Allow me to list the titles of some of the nominated and winning pieces: “A Personal Journey of Self-Discovery,” “Ellen & Portia’s Wedding Day,” “Harrowing Incident a Troubling Reminder of Homophobia.”

Now let me be clear: I think these awards do a great service (I help organize this year’s 20th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York!). And absolutely, there are some pieces of journalism that hit their mark. But we still give awards to people who tell their story instead of give us numbers, people who use emotion instead of facts. Maybe the flaw is in the award criteria: we no longer need happy and sappy portrayals of gays in the media to allow people to get comfortable with the culture, so much as we need essential bedrocks for discussing our rights. This is where the recent New York Times piece sets itself apart. It provides us, all of us, wherever we fall on the sides of the debate, with a serious tone to talk about the issues.

The current definition of what constitutes “good” gay journalism is not serious in the sense that it does not render the issue in a way to make progress. In the mid-to-late 1990s the sad stories about a tragic coming out did so much to educate, but the gay community needs people to actually write some laws now! A famous gay athlete telling his story does almost nothing next to a piece that tells us, in exact dollars and cents (sense), how much more it costs to be a gay couple than a heterosexual couple. One tugs at our heart-strings and one gives us something to say on the floor of Congress.

It might be a larger trend today that in an age of Twitter, personal blogs, and fast reporting, that we have to give kudos to just about anyone who actually takes the time to sit down and think deeply about the issue. But the notion that getting any kind of gay representation in media coverage might not be exactly what we need. We need more Tara Siegel Bernards and Ron Liebers out there if the goal is to make equal media representation become equal civic representation.

Subtly, I think this response naturalizes an either-or mentality about being gay while having a career (especially one in the media). It’s a type of mentality that, if you look hard enough, might make the closet a really comfortable place to stay. Oddly enough, this quote hits at the heart of the bigger issue surrounding Perez: it highlights the all too obvious, but all too ignored fact that the faces and personalities we see on our TV screens might be a good measure of what we will and will not tolerate on a larger scale.

Of course I don’t mean to say that Charles Perez is maliciously propagating anti-gay sentiments. Charles Perez was a local Miami television anchor that was recently fired after filing a discrimination complaint against his station. Before anchoring the weekend evening news on WPLG, Perez had a long career history working at local television stations and eventually anchoring his own talk show. Not surprisingly, the reasons for his firing are not clear. Perez says he was gradually taken out of promotional spots for his show at a time when his personal life was becoming increasingly visible. He blames his firing on his filing of the complaint and ultimately on discrimination. The station strongly denies any kind of discrimination and says Perez was spreading “misstatements and untruths.” Whether Perez is trying to cash in on his sexuality or the station is using excuses to cover up actual discrimination is unclear and the evidence doesn’t come down on one side or the other.

As is the case with these kinds of stories, some have used it as a rallying cry and some have denounced it as disgraceful – and all within the comments section of any gay blog that covered the story. But even I have to admit that I’m not completely sure where I stand. Still, I think this is an important event because it lets us reflect on where gay people and media are with respect to each other.

I have never been one to settle with the “well, that’s the way it is” argument. But sadly, I do think that America’s hearts and minds are reflected in the faces we see on our television screens. Yet the delicate push and pull between depicting the ideal and depicting and actual diversity in the media takes no exception with the gay professionals we see. Many will say gays will be more accepted in the media when we are more accepted in the home. Others will say we must put gay people in front of the American public if we ever want to make change. Perhaps it’s the joy of living in a country that draws its national narrative from the immigration of so many different types of people that makes this debate so much pricklier.

I don’t think the most important thing we can learn from Charles Perez is that trying to break the glass closet still kills a gay person’s career or that professionals might be using their sexuality to cry gay wolf. While these lessons give rise to important discussions, the most important thing we learn from Charles Perez is about the delicate and sometimes dangerous relationship between gays and the media.

My mind is immediately drawn to the way people react to Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow’s reporting – two great thinkers who are respected and well-liked within the media, but constantly used as the butt of everyone else’s jokes. I sometimes feel that when America wants to talk about something either of them said, it has a hidden urge to make an immature joke about sex and giggle softly – and it’s something more than just the overly-sensitive can recognize. Consider, for example, this Huffington Post piece (especially the title) or this New York Times Magazine piece about Maddow’s sexuality despite the fact that she never purported to love her job because she wanted to be a sex icon. This might be another example of our inability to think about sexuality as divorced from sex.

The discussion about sexual orientations in the media might be very similar to the discussion about race in the media or women in the media or redheads in the media or pizza-lovers in the media. I think our scrutiny of all media personalities is also fueled by the distrust people have for their news. I think that many people find it easier to be cynical than to dig in and think about a story. I also think it’s easier for people to pick apart their news anchor than it is for them to pick apart an important headline. And although there is a give and take, I think the more serious we become about our news, the more we might realize that the best news gathering has little to do with what type of person the anchor is attracted to. In the end, maybe the relationship between the media and anything about personal lives is that there is none at all.

Mediaite

It’s not just because we want to see who finagles their way to the top of the Power Grid (Meacham, watch your back, Stengel’s comin’ for you!) – could it be that we actually….like this? Alas, early a.m. emails and chocolate/candy consumption aside, we do – it’s hard not to when we’re publishing gems from Ruthie Frieds to KatieBakes, to Bill Rappleye (there may be a few decades between them) — with a few Panel Nerds thrown in for good measure.  It’s hard not to when “work” involves something like Office Hours (two words: JEWISH SINGING). It’s hard not to with Dan Abrams standing over our desks every day telling us what to write. Kidding! That was just to see if you were paying attention.

Speaking of attention, thank you, dear readers, for yours — after one month, we’re pleased to have clocked 1.2 million pageviews, with pickup from Perez Hilton to Paul Krugman, Howard Stern to the White House, Martha to MuggleNet. (Is it bad that I was most excited about MuggleNet?) And also, sports people and sports stuff! See, we weren’t just in it for the fish!

No, we’re in it for love —and money, of course. It’s never been a better time for media! But actually, we’re sorta in this for the love. After a month, we’ve actually had a pretty hilarious time. Our team is small but busy and excited to keep on trying new things, and our contributors are perceptive and entertaining. And, not to brag, but we really do have the best freaking interns in the business. Words cannot express, but their Twitter feed is a good start. You should come visit our office, you’ll see. We have candy. And a hula-hoop. It’s like Talk magazine circa 1999! Hm, perhaps not the best metaphor. Let’s just take that asterisk from the headline and put it here.* But hey, it gives us at least another month. So please stick with us until then!

In the meantime, please enjoy this photo gallery – “A Month of Mediaite” – featuring a selection of images from our launch and first month of existence. Thanks again for your feedback, constructive criticism and support.

Related:

Mediaite Columnists
5QQ – Five Quick Questions
Office Hours
Mediaite Jobs Board!
Photogallery: A Month of Mediaite

Photo of Little Baby Mediaite via weblogs.wpix.com. If your baby is cuter, send us a pic at tips@mediaite.com.

Here at Mediaite, we love to have fun.  But it would be really hard for me to have fun if I decided to write a post about what Obama has and has not done for the LGBT community (and, we’re obsessed with the media, not with politics!).  Instead, I decided to write about the media’s reaction to what Obama has and has not done for the LGBT community.  There’s a big different between these two things.  I was not writing about the best gay blogs, but rather those most critical of Obama.  Let me be really, really clear: I was not trying to list the blogs with the best political analysis – that’s a totally different list (light bulb!).  I think it would be very hard to argue that each blog I chose doesn’t deserve a spot on the list when you consider my criteria.  Queerty has always been skeptical (and yes, whiny and mean-spirited sometimes) about all LGBT politics, David Badash has done a great job of giving his readers (and particularly, his Twitter followers) up-to-the-minute commentary, Andrew Sullivan has always been one of the most important political gay critics (even if he doesn’t “solely” write about gay politics), and Gay AmericaBlog simply doesn’t let anyone off the hook.  Some have said that screaming doesn’t equate to criticism.  And I’m sure all the Stonewall rioters politely moseyed on out of the bar and into the back of police vans, huh?  When looking for the most critical gay blog, you simply can’t ignore a headline like this: “THAT’S IT: Obama Has Spat and Shit in the Faces of Gay America.”

Allow me also to address what I think is a rather strange criticism of my article that popped up: that it only represents the angry, white gay male voice of criticism.  For me, it’s simple: criticism about discriminatory laws implicates all those against whom those laws discriminate. So, the criticims of Obama here are about how he’s failing to address the needs of the whole LGBT community, not just gay men.  Marriage equality, for example, is about gay men, lesbians, and transgenders alike.  Let me also say that my mornings are almost always devoted to bookmarking new gay blogs and I read TONS of them.  I originally had Pam’s House Blend on my list, but her best critical pieces quoted huge chunks of other blogs on the list – I was looking for unapologetic, ruthless, original commentary that exudes importance and urgency. I tried to make that clear by my explanations, and my numerous examples for each blog.

There were many excellent blogs that people suggested that I didn’t include.  Why?  Because they would rather provide their readers with breaking news than write an opinionated, hyper-critical piece about Obama.  There’s nothing wrong with that – I read Towleroad everyday.  These guys and gals just don’t belong on my list.  But of course there were great blogs that I missed.  So let me make a few additions!  And let the critics keep criticizing the critique of the critics list!

5) The Bilerico Project – I originally docked this blog because it has many, many contributors and in looking for Obama critics, it felt like a big gay news forum with occasional Obama-talk when I was looking for a blog name I could eequate with smart commentary.  But you’re all right, Gotkin-haters.  Bilerico definitely deserves a spot on the list (and not just because I helped a lot with the NY GLAAD Media Awards and love Kate Clinton).  The collaborative nature of the site enhances its contributors’ criticisms of Obama because it lets people respond to- and reflect on what everyone else is saying.  So, sorry for leaving you out in the first go-’round, Bilerico!

The Gayest Obama Criticism: Obama: Where’s the Leadership?, Obama’s Upcoming Hush-Hush Damage Control

6) JaySays – You wanted a lesser-known gay blog?  Here it is!  My apologies for overlooking you, Jay (and your writers).  JaySays certainly deserves a spot on this list for its extremely smart and insightful articles about our new administration.  Jay’s posts offer a certain something that many other blogs lack.  They connect the dots when few others have, they take interesting angles that not too many would think of, and they make sure to always include a great write-up of the day’s gay political events.

The Gayest Obama Criticism: Obama Puts Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the Closet, Inauguration Declares Equality For All – Except Gays, Breaking Up is Hard to Do: the Obama Administration and I

As always, comment if you disagree!  Put your own lists together!  Make your own blog that I can include in Gaybama 3!  Go!  Fight!  Win!

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Follow Kevin Gotkin on Twitter!

1) Queerty - Queerty tries extremely hard to be the most opinionated gay blog out there.  They might succeed if their snark didn’t translate into insults indiscriminately being hurled at everyone and anyone.  But since its inception, Queerty has undoubtedly been writing impassioned, biting commentary on everything gay.  When Queerty gets it right, its posts are inspiring, angering, and beautiful because its writers have little interest in reporting – they scream, they shout, but they rarely let someone slip by if it affects the LGBT community.  They understand that hot, half-naked guys might draw a little more attention than a great post about Obama’s unfulfilled promises, but that certainly doesn’t mean they bite their tongues.

The Gayest Obama Criticism: Obama Promised to Uphold His Promises. He’s Not Getting Off That Easy, Marks His Words: Gays Will ‘Have Some Pretty Good Feelings’ About Obama Administration, Obama Must Issue Exec Order to Begin DADT Repeal. And Yet He Won’t, and the real zinger, THAT’S IT: Obama Has Spat and Shit In the Faces of Gay America

2) The New Civil Rights Movement - For being a one-man show, The New Civil Rights Movement does its part to be a go-to blog for both reports and analysis of the most recent gay politics.  The Twitter-holic David Badash behind the site says he hopes it will help quash people’s ignorance, not unlike the way news about Prop 8 sparked his own interest in following gay news.  TNCRM makes this list for its thoughtful, probing posts and strong activist mentality.

The Gayest Obama Criticism: Obama’s Regifting of Gay Rights, What You’ve Been Waiting For: Obama’s Gay Rights Revolution, Is President Obama doing enough and keeping his promises to the gay community?

3) Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish – Although Andrew Sullivan doesn’t devote his online musings solely to the gay rights movement, he brings a history to the issues that few other online writers do.  Not only was he one of the first mainstream journalists to experiment with blogging, he also carries a background of an openly gay, high-profile journalist and academic in the early 1990s.  His writing about gay issues has lined the pages of the New York Times, Best American Essays (of 1999), and The New Republic.  It is no wonder, then, that from his perch on The Atlantic, he is one of Obama’s most influential online critics.

The Gayest Obama Criticism: Obama’s Gratuitous Insult to Gay Couples, Obama’s Moment of Truth on Gay Equality, UGH

4) AmericaBlog – AmericaBlog just launched its gay-only off-shoot of the motherblog, but the site would have made this list with or without its own homo URL.  Gay AmericaBlog could be considered the more outspoken counterpart to its friend-blog, Towleroad (a site that would have made this list if it wasn’t trying to be the gay CNN by reporting instead of commenting).  Yes, the advertising on the site takes up exactly half of the screen, but the posts never stray from their intent to deliver the truth that “a great nation deserves,” which, unfortunately, often includes deep criticism of Obama and his administration.

The Gayest Obama Criticism: Obama Defends DOMA in Federal Court, Obama DOJ Lies to Politico in Defending Hate Brief Against Gays, Obama and the Gays, Again, President Obama Revealed Today Another Reason He Can’t Act on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

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