Special needs:
This post by Curt at The Groovy Age of Horror strongly arguing for specialist rather than generalist horrorblogs got me thinking about the other pop-culture blogosphere with which I'm most familiar (and the formation of which I like to pretend I had a hand in as well), the comics blogosphere. Regarding the horror one, Curt says:

A good core concept should be broad enough that you have lots of stuff to post about, but tight enough to define and individualize your blog. "Horror" is way too generic and amorphous. If there's one thing the emerging horror blogosphere doesn't need, it's a bunch of "horror" blogs. That's not the kind of horror blogosphere I want to see develop.

This philosophy has certainly worked well for Curt, who's pretty much cornered the market on horror kitsch/trash/exotica from the bell-bottom era. But in terms of the comics blogosphere, we haven't really seen a lot of this. I'm sure there are dozens of comics blogs that talk only about Big Two supercomics, but since I'm usually not interested in hearing from people for whom that is their sole point of comic-book reference, I don't read them. There are some mostly-manga/anime blogs, there's Egon (all art/alt/underground, all the time, to the exclusion even of the likes of smarter supercreators like Grant Morrison or Alan Moore), there's NeilAlien (in theory a Dr. Strange fan/news site, in practice one of the best general comicsblogs around), and I suppose you could classify Fanboy Rampage as a specialist blog if comics-fan and comics-creator stupidity is a specialty; but for the most part the comics blogs that I like the best, and also the comics blogs that seem to have moved the blogosphere furthest forward, are generalist blogs. Some, like Tom Spurgeon's unbeatable Comics Reporter and Dirk Deppey's seminal ˇJournalista!, are generalist by design, endeavoring to paint a complete, news-based portrait of the medium and the industry; others, from Bill Sherman's Pop Culture Gadabout to David Allen Jones's Johnny Bacardi Show to (the near-universally acknowledged best of the bunch these days) Jog's eponymous Blog are generalist simply by virtue of the tastes of the bloggers involved. Heck, this is even true of the great semi-comics bloggers Jim Henley and Eve Tushnet. These bloggers allow their postings to be as wide-ranging and heterodox as their interests, and contra Curt, they seem to have no trouble finding comics-related issues to talk about nor an audience to listen.

I think generalist horrorblogger Steven at Corpse Eaters puts it best when he says that he's keeping it general because, basically, that's the way he's interested in blogging horror. He also argues that provided your voice is fresh enough and your insights sharp enough, you'll attract a following (if you're interested in that sort of thing), specialty or no specialty. To this I might add another caveat when it comes to specialist blogging--if generating hits is indeed a goal of yours, keep in mind that a specialty may increase them amidst a certain subset of readers, but decrease them among people who don't happen to be interested in the area you specialize in. Groovy Age is actually a good example, as far as yours truly is concerned--Curt's areas of interest in horror dovetail barely at all with my own. Were he to shift his emphasis from old Vampirella comics and apply his keen mind for the subject to, say, Clive Barker as well from time to time, I'd probably be a more frequent visitor. This of course is not to say that he shouldn't keep on doing what he's doing--that's my whole point. Do whatever turns you on is my blogging motto. Whether this yields more specialty blogs (count me among the people who'd love a giallo journal!) or more general ones, I think we'd be keeping blogs evil regardless. And that's the ultimate goal for horrorblogging, n'est-ce pas?

So whatever side you think you come down on, please go read what both Curt and Steven have to say. After all, the unexamined blog is not worth blogging.