Charts New Path

Pam Spaulding, founder of the influential blog Pam's House Blend, announced Friday that she is folding her site into one of the top progressive group blogs, FireDogLake.

Pam's House Blend will become part of the FireDogLake cluster of blogs that focus on several international and domestic issues from a progressive perspective. House Blend contributors, including Autumn Sandeen, Alvin McEwen, Scott Wooledge, and Laurel Rameseyer, are slated to make the move as well.

Spaulding said that due to time constraints and growth of the blog, moving the operations to FireDogLake will make it easier for her and her team to cover more news, including the upcoming 2012 election cycle. She also said that the move will encourage more voices in discussions over LGBT topics.

"The opportunity to bring new readership to the Blend (more non-LGBT progressive voices) into the debate on equality is also a big positive for the Blend, so I thank Jane for the chance to expand PHB readership," she wrote.

Spaulding told The Advocate she was approached by Teddy Partridge, a blogger who covers LGBT issues on FireDogLake, after she told her readers that she was burned out and looking to either shut down Pam's House Blend or move it elsewhere. After some consideration, she said she decided to move to FireDogLake when it was agreed that she would retain editorial control, keep her contributors, and retain the archives of her blog, dating back to 2004.

Jane Hamsher, the founder of FireDogLake, made the announcement with Spaulding Friday. The two are friends who have worked together on another major site, Daily Kos.

"[It] gives me great pleasure to announce that Pam's House Blend will be joining the FireDogLake family of blogs," Hamsher wrote. "I think it's a perfect union -- as the task of hosting a blog and performing the tech, legal and security work to keep it up and running becomes more and more complex and expensive, it will free Pam and her fellow bloggers to spend their time doing what they do best, which is blog. It also allows us to feature the work of a really amazing group of writers on FDL, and be tremendously enriched by the PHB community."