Example of disastrous choice in co-blogger: Jesse picking Amanda Marcotte.

Your point about chosing your co-blogger(s) correctly is quite valid; we've both seen blogs go bye bye because of a poor choice, there. I think I got pretty lucky with the two co-bloggers I've taken on in the last year or so; they've added quite a bit to the party.

But I don't think they've added to the hit rate as much as they'd have done a few years ago, for the reasons I mentioned.

PArt of what we're seeing, too, is the move toward a more commercially driven blog, particulalrly among the higher end... say, Captain Ed, for example. In Ed's case, that's not damaged his output in any way, as best I can tell... but I wonder what would be happening there were he more of an obvious group effort.

All that said, I wonder a little, at the dynamics needed, then versus now, to have and keep a successful political blog. There's so very many of them out there that you have to be downright HUGE to be taken seriously, anymore. Most... hell... ANY single blogger, simply can't keep up with the demands on time, thatb maintaining a high hit rate, demands, anymore.

Individuals might collect news from the coffeehouse. Then they would add a couple of others and voila, you have the Times.

The one point I would make is that there has to be a head honcho/Tsar/editor-in-chief. Someone to make the decisions of who comes on/leaves the blog. Not that they are a quality control gatekeeper of individual post content, but a higher level quality of poster content.

Writing that I was struck by how the Japanese made a virtue of necessity and moved away from designate quality control screens and put each worker in charge of their own quality control. Imagine the potential for a newspaper to make a similar productivity gain. Of course such a system means you have to fire those who can't self-control the quality.

Just to put in a word, I think the commentariat contributes much to the style of a blog. OTB's is one of the best; WoC's used to be great but (IMO) has become somewhat strident and polarized in the last few months.