Who is Ted Leonsis and why should I care?

Rex Hammock has an insightful post about Ted Leonsis’ intentionality. The insight is honed by an “update” reference to Doc Searls fascination with the same guy. Both of these luminaries found their inspiration in a Washington Post fluff piece about the man.

Rex archly doesn’t link to Doc (who linked to him) and the circle jerk is thus broken.

Blogging is among the most egalitarian pursuits. You don’t even have to write well to find a place at the table. I clicked through to Leonsis’ blog and found a link to Lou Reed’s site.

Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends use AOL. Fifteen years or so ago I had a brief and difficult-to-terminate subscription. For a while I was grateful to them for the floppy disks they sent me. Later, when they shifted media to CDs I wasn’t as grateful. I always thought they would make good targets for shooting practice… but I didn’t want to mess up the place with scrap plastic. I heard about people who used them to make mobiles and hung them in the garden to frighten birds. My default solution though, was simply to send them to the dump.

So who is Ted Leonsis besides a guy who has a negative effect on my local landfill? Well, he’s obviously rich, he owns a sports team, and he’s a blogger but he’s not Mark Cuban. If you read Ted’s “101 List” you see a lot of material goals… from Ferraris to Phillipe Pateks. A year or so ago he even bought Jason Calacanis! He has AOL cooties all over him, but the content at Ted’s Take tells you that he hasn’t let the corporate thing dull his creativity or narrow his interests. Ted Leonsis is a guy in a suit who does what he wants to do and that includes blogging.