[promoted by BooMan]
jim capozzola, the blogfather of all left blogtopia and writer of the rittenhouse review, has passed away. susie mandrak of suburban guerilla gives us the terrible news:
my friend jim died this evening.
jim, one of the founders of the political blogosphere, started the rittenhouse review a week or two before duncan black started eschaton.
he was my fairy blogfather. he showed me how to install a sitemeter, he gave me tips for building readership, and advised me to “pick a fight with a blogger who’s much better known – you can’t believe how well it works.” (i never took his advice, though.) he even paid to have the ugly banner ad removed from the top of my first site.
more than that, jim was extraordinarily generous. a master networker, he insisted on introducing all of his friends to each other and they, in turn, became friends. “see?” he’d say. “i told you you’d hit it off.” in turn, i introduced him to the sweet potato fries and the chocolate bread pudding at silk city.
julia of sisyphus shrugged goes on:
jim was prickly and suspicious and cynical and hard-edged and one of the sweetest people i’ve ever met.
i first “met” jim when he linked to something i wrote and i wrote him a thank you note and he thought i was trolling for a sidebar link, because everyone did, because jim was it back then.
he championed me all the same, as he did lots of other people who are big bloggers now.
we got to be e-mail buddies, and we met when he came to new york for one of the first liberal blogger foodfests (brother’s barbecue, because jim loved barbecue, and we left a large tip and the waitress told us that the conservatives didn’t tip).
then we arranged to meet in philadelphia and i ended up at the house of a nice young couple named black along with everyone with a blog who i wanted to meet in a hundred mile radius.
jim, in the mean time, was effortless and insanely dapper and endlessly kind to newcomers who he thought should be getting more notice than they did.
i’ll post some of his greatest hits in a bit, so you’ll know what all the fuss is about, but let’s let jim the nice guy have his due for a few hours.
dammit, this makes me mad.
anyway, if you’re so inclined, what you could do for jim that would have made him happy is sometime pimp a blog that you don’t think is getting as much attention as it deserves.
also maybe send your friends an e-mail when you don’t have an excuse.
the staff at skippy international is terribly depressed to hear this.
jim was a friend to skippy’s blog, and one of its earliest supporters. back when blogger forced people to buy their way out of running a blogger banner at the top of their blogs, jim paid the $11 for skippy to go bannerless. and he did it without telling us, and only informed us after the fact. he was quite generous, and with his blogging expertise and time as well (he was the one that warned us how litigious matt drudge could be).
jim’s was one of the very first blogs to populate blogtopia, preceding both duncan, as susie notes, and markos, as well. it was jim’s early support of skippy’s blog on the rittenhouse roll that lead to others noticing our work.
it is ironic that on this day when steve gilliard’s blog has been continued by others, we also put jim capozzola to rest. blogtopia has lost another unique and important voice.
in accordance with julia’s suggestion. we suggest everyone pop by all the blogs we’ve said hello to.
rest in peace, jim.
