Variety deputy editor Anne Thompson says the season for newspapers to crank up their Oscars-Globes-etc blogs is fast approaching. She gives a rundown on who's doing what at the big dogs. For example, she blogs:

Variety.com is starting its long in-depth coverage of the awards season on Awards Central.com. NYT media columnist David Carr says he is returning to Oscar blogging duty sometime in November in his The Carpetbagger guise; he says he'll focus more on the New York side of things and churn out more stories for print first, blog later.

And the LAT is beefing up its awards season supplement (full of ads, natch), The Envelope, both in print and online.

Here's one reason why they do it: the Emmys drove Gold Derby to be the L.A. Times' most visited blog last month. Even though the visitors are not necessarily L.A. Times readers or Southern California residents, it's all eyeballs baby.