One of the most powerful criticisms of weblogging: it's derivative. We rehash opinion pieces by newspaper columnists who are themselves far from the action. And there is some truth in the accusation. So it's refreshing to see a bona fide war correspondent, Peter Maass of the New York Times Magazine, embarking on a blog.
   Disclosure: Peter is a friend of mine from way back, I'm a huge fan of his writing, and I've been haranguing him to produce a weblog for months. Shame he didn't blog from Kandahar, when he was working on the NYT Magazine piece on Afghanistan's new warlords. But here he is, now, better late than never, live from Islamabad. He's been at it, trying out the medium for the last two weeks, but he's only now allowed me to spread the word. The irony: his latest post is a comment on a New York Times opinion piece, which he could have written as easily from the US as from Islamabad.
   Some weblog social trivia: PeterMaass.com is designed by Matt Haughey of Blogger and Metafilter fame; and he used to go out with Rebecca Mead of the New Yorker, who wrote You've Got Blog, one of the first and best articles about blogging in establishment media. It's all connected.
· PeterMaass.com