On my panel in Vegas about two months ago now, one of my esteemed colleagues made the point that to succeed in this blog game, it would behoove one to have funny Photoshopped images or YouTube videos within the context of your posting content. A nice design doesn’t hurt either. Fair points for sure, but my brain was already spinning with a retort.

“This isn’t always the case,” I said in a mumbley low tone I’m sure only I could understand. “Take a look at a site like Fire Joe Morgan. They use an old Blogger template that’s no longer available, it’s almost completely text-based and they’re absolutely hilarious. It’s probably my favorite blog.”

Last night, sadly, Fire Joe Morgan announced they decided to close their doors.  Hey: they have real lives and families. And Ken Tremendous (Michael Schur) writes and produces “The Office,” which is a show I quite enjoy. So that’s comforting. (Pam’s back!)

But yes, that’s what made FJM so great: they eschewed any common blogging practices and just did their thing. They created their own style, a style that’s been aped by everyone under the sun: take a MSM baseball column or article, cite a graf, rip it to shreds in your own words right under that graf and continue to do this until said column or article came to its merciful conclusion. Rinse, wash, repeat.

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