The young, scrappy Monica Guzman over at the P-I, derided by some, adored by others, dropped this little bombshell on the world on the way out of town ^[1]:

After today, Net Native is history.

I’m taking a three-week break to see my family on the East Coast. And when I come back, I’ll be running a new online project for the P-I, something we’ve come to call — respectfully and with an endearing smirk — the Big Blog.

Inspired by the city beats of Seattlest, Metroblogging Seattle, and, most famously, the Slog, the Big Blog will take a more conversational, informal and fun look at the news and culture that makes this city what it is.

Now, we like Monica. And by “we” I mean “me and the other authors who won’t speak up.” But this one is kind of head-scratching. Our competition is already pretty well ensconced. You have the Slog ^[2], written by the sorts that are still bitter about being high school outcasts and rejects. You have Seattlest ^[3], cowards who have still never picked up the thrown gauntlet ^[4] because they are without honor and cower in fear at us destroying them in pub quiz. You have Crosscut ^[5], aka “Hey! The old Weekly writers got themselves computers with connections to the internets finally!” And then there’s Citizen Rain ^[6], KING’s entry into this market that I can’t say much about, other than it’s just like Seattlest and Slog (minus the bile and bite) and this fair blog. Oh, and I shouldn’t leave out seattle.livejournal.com ^[7], since that’s where we steal a lot of our content from.

So… where does the P-I’s “Big Blog” fit in this niche? Are they going to be more inside baseball than Slog? Far less cowardly than Seattlest? (That wouldn’t be hard.) Write original content like Crosscut? Or just post a bunch of 20-word blurbs and links like Citizen Rain?

I’m certainly not scared of them poaching our audience. We serve a completely different reader base. The P-I will pull in their readers and people with an interest in the Northwest, while we will continue to serve our core readership of our parents, crazy Ron Paul voting uncles, spiteful ex-lovers, Slog commenters spoiling for a fight, and people who stumble on us accidentally looking for that Enumclaw horse sex video.

But where would this new P-I blog fit in to the blog ecosystem? Do you think there’s room for them?

(Aside to Monica: Just because you don’t use Amazon ^[8] doesn’t mean you should say it out loud in Seattle. It’s like saying how much nicer Airbus planes are while you’re taking the Boeing tour.)