Ken Layne, no longer in Los Angeles, but of the place. He co-founded L.A. Examiner.com with Matt Welch, wrote for the Online Journalism Review at USC and began blogging four years ago. He's resuming even though the hopes he had for the medium — as a smart alternative to lazy mainstream columnists and reporters — haven't been realized.

As we now know, what actually happened is the non-journalists figured out just how easy it was to crank out opinions. And instead of a million tough-ass reporters breaking and making news from wherever it happened, we've got a million little Jonah Goldbergs and Maureen Dowds, all typing their little opinions based on the same AP copy...

That so many of the bloggers are better than the Professional Columnists doesn't make me feel any happier about the way this thing has shaken down. (There's only a handful of good columnists in this country, along with many hundreds of awful cliché hustlers. Being as "good" as some no-name filler hack from Scripps-Howard or whatever is still being not very good at all. And you already know that, in your heart, so I'll shut up about it.)

But you've typed a lot of half-assed, witless opinion, too, say my critics. Yep. I am sorry about that, but not quite sorry enough to stop.

He's looking forward to seeing how the bloggers do at the conventions this time around.