Old is the New New to Cliopatria's Hall of Fame

Beside promoting the periodic history carnivals and sponsoring the annual Cliopatria Awards, Cliopatria recognizes excellence in history blogging in its Hall of Fame. Its first honorees are: IA's Invisible Adjunct (February 2003-August 2004), Caleb McDaniel's Mode for Caleb (July 2004-August 2006), Bill Turkel's Digital History Hacks (December 2005-December 2008), Mr. H's Giornale Nuovo (October 2002-October 2007), and The Edge of the American West (October 2007-December 2010). Today, Jonathan Dresner of Pittsburg State University, HNN, and Frog in a Well explains why we are adding Rob MacDougall's Old is the New New (November 2002-December 2010) to Cliopatria's Hall of Fame:

Old is the New New (November 2002-December 2010)
Rob MacDougall at Old Is the New New did almost everything wrong. He posted irregularly. He wrote about all sorts of topics that interested or irritated him instead of building an audience. And he mostly wrote about the intersection of fields that don't like each other very much: history and technology, history and game design. Also Canadian views of American history, culture and politics, which is always a crowd-pleaser. He was writing about zombies when zombies weren't cool. But MacDougall's blog became one of the unalloyed joys of the history blogosphere, and one of the reasons why the last ten years has been so much more interesting, and perhaps less surprising. How can a history blog explain the future? By ignoring the rules, the boundaries, the separations; or perhaps it's more correct to say that it was his wandering spotlight-like focus on those intersections, boundaries, and divisions which made Old Is the New New so much fun, so enlightening.

Then there's the writing. The original essayists practiced a form of writing which blended fact and fiction, wandered through topics, reshaped the sense of what was possible in prose. MacDougall's posts regularly lived up to that legacy. Take the essay he wrote on the day after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, American For A Day." It starts with a quote from The Simpsons; later he moves on to reference The Lord of the Rings and The Dukes of Hazzard in the same sentence, then uses Sarah Palin's discourses of authenticity to reflect on the nature of Canadian self-consciousness. He then riffs on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" (plus Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass) in a way that not only shines a light on Obama but, in retrospect, explains a lot about the rise of the Tea Party. Then, he finishes with Walt Whitman, just for fun.

Rob MacDougall's post Turk 182 won the inaugural Cliopatria Award for Best Post, after which he was (and, I hope, will be again) a regular fixture in the judging committees (2006, 2009). He's primarily blogging now at Play the Past, where his interest in history, gaming, and pedagogy continue to flourish in the company of kindred spirits, and microblogs at Robotnik. Old Is The New New is done, at least for now, but it was a great contribution to the early years of history blogging, and shockingly enduring work in an ephemeral medium.
– Jonathan Dresner