Dodger Thoughts blog goes indie

Jon Weisman took his well-nurtured community of Dodgers fans to the Los Angeles Times website for a year, then to ESPN's Los Angeles website for the past two. As of tonight, he's back on his own at Dodgerthoughts.com. It's still the place where Weisman, a Variety television observer by day, has his "outlet for dealing psychologically with the Los Angeles Dodgers and baseball." In his first post at the new home, he writes about the past three years:

The journey that followed was better for me professionally than for Dodger Thoughts itself. While I was taken more seriously than ever for my work on the Dodgers, and (in a welcome relief) compensated for it, the site itself suffered. The commenting community, which I valued immeasurably, broke apart. Readers remained, but despite joining a mainstream site with wide reach, the page views for Dodger Thoughts did not rise. Commenters, by and large, had other places to go.

For several months in 2009, I was hoping that improvements could be made at the Times that would bring that community back, but they were neither sufficiently fast nor user-friendly. I value those who have stuck around and who have come anew, but essentially, that Toaster wonderland was gone.

By the time I moved two years ago to ESPN Los Angeles, I was left to focus on doing the best work I could, hoping to at least retain readers if not commenters. As far as my professional life, I dreamed big again.

Well, now I’m back on my own. For now, anyway. The reasons, I think I can say without being indecorous, relate to shifting priorities over there in the big city. So what are you gonna do?

Weisman is the Dodgers writer whose work I have quoted, linked or referred to the most over the years. Here's hoping the new set-up is good for him and his readers: spring training starts in less than a month. "I could be here for 10 days or 10,000," he writes. "Still figuring that out."

By the way, the Internet could take a day or so for the redirects and domain changes to take hold. So if he's not there when you try him, be patient. Here's his last post at ESPN LA.