From “From Internet Pals to Real Friends, Bloggers Remaking Jewish Community” (JTA, May 8, 2006)

The personal bonds created by these ongoing Web conversations can be strong. New York writer Esther Kustanowitz, who runs three blogs and contributes regularly to others, met several bloggers from her sites at the conference. They’d never met before, but she says they felt like old friends.

“It’s a subversion of the usual construct of celebrity,” she says. “You know people not by how they look, but from the inside out.”

The story was also picked up by the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent and J.-The Jewish News Weekly (San Francisco).

Update May 20, 2006:
J. expanded on the story in this article, “People of the Blog.”

For more Esther in the Press, click here.