Of the bloggers I contacted to talk to us for this story, I really held out little hope that Choire Sicha, managing editor of gawker.com, would return my e-mail, much less agree to talk to us.

Oh, me of little faith.

On Thursday, Raleigh-Elizabeth and I made our way to Taralluci y Vino in the East Village for what was, for me anyway, the most anticipated coffee date I have been on in a while. And the first ever to involve a recording device.

Mr. Sicha surprised but did not disappoint. So charmed was I, that I had a hard time taking notes (Raleigh, thank god, had the presence of mind to run to a bodega and get a battery for the mini-disc recorder before we got started!) as a highly caffeinated Choire took us through a typical day at Gawker and gave us his take on “the Gawker effect.”

So, as it has happened on every story I’ve worked on to date, talking to an expert has changed everything we thought we knew about competition among bloggers in New York City.

According to Sicha, ahem, there actually is very little in the way of competition among bloggers in the city. In fact, Choire was pretty insistent in characterizing this own lack of ambition and curiosity-- He’s a good talker and it’s actually pretty easy to believe that success finds him without him doing much other than showing up. It should be noted, though, that the day after we met with him, Choire posted five items on Gawker, which kind of outs him on the work ethic front. It’s hard to believe the kids at 4 Times Square turn out nearly so much on a Friday!

In a way, that’s the whole point. Everyone out there is pretty much doing their own thing, and having a pretty good time doing it. The big impact of high-profile outfits like Gawker and Gothamist is that they bring new readers into the blogosphere and in doing so create a bigger sandbox for everyone else (including the ‘competition’) to play in.

So, while Raleigh and I revisit our pitch and offer up a little chicken blood to the nut graph gods, check out these Brooklyn-based bloggers:

http://maudnewton.com/blog/

http://www.productshopnyc.com/htdocs/

I’ve put in a call to Ms. Newton. . . . If you are out there, Maud, we’ll take you out for coffee too!

--Kevin