The Narco Appeal Of Blogging
Slight navel-gazing on a U.S. holiday: a good longish story from Andrew Sullivan in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine. One of the earliest columnist/bloggers, Sullivan documents his own learnings in his blogging life, and the visceral appeal of the format. And even though it is a different focus and sensibility than what we have done at our company, there are a lot of similarities that I can identify with.
Some gems after the jump
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Keefer
—“A blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing—and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater.” As a journalism-driven blog media company, the last part is seductive but dangerous territory, and we have had to balance it over the years.
—“Writers can be sensitive, vain souls, requiring gentle nurturing from editors, and oddly susceptible to the blows delivered by reviewers. They survive, for the most part, but the thinness of their skins is legendary…Now the feedback was instant, personal, and brutal.”
—“A blog, therefore, bobs on the surface of the ocean but has its anchorage in waters deeper than those print media is technologically able to exploit. It disempowers the writer to that extent, of course. The blogger can get away with less and afford fewer pretensions of authority.”
—“People have a voice for radio and a face for television. For blogging, they have a sensibility.” Truer words have…
—“There are times, in fact, when a blogger feels less like a writer than an online disc jockey, mixing samples of tunes and generating new melodies through mashups while also making his own music. He is both artist and producer—and the beat always goes on.” The new definition of an online journalist, for sure.
—“The triumphalist notion that blogging should somehow replace traditional writing is as foolish as it is pernicious. In some ways, blogging’s gifts to our discourse make the skills of a good traditional writer much more valuable, not less. The torrent of blogospheric insights, ideas, and arguments places a greater premium on the person who can finally make sense of it all, turning it into something more solid, and lasting, and rewarding.” Hope…
Posted In: Media & Publishing, Social Media, Nanopublishing
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Comments (3)
Dec 1, 2008 1:26 AM
This is some very philosophic writing on what it means to blog. I wonder how non-writers see it. (i.e., bloggers that were never writers beforehand.)
Dec 1, 2008 8:33 AM
I fit that “blogger that was not a writer beforehand”. I have been blogging for the last 6 years of thereabout. I got started when I realized how Dave Winer used his Frontier software for “blogging” in the beginning of the genre. I was hard copy journaling at the time and realized that I could set up a running record of my interests and views for myself.
I blogged when I went to live and teach in China for a year. And continue to do it for the same reasons. But my personal contributions have stayed pretty constant. And what Andrew S says about blogging is mostly true for me.
I sort of laugh when Nick Carr says that it’s the “end of the blogosphere”. Nick doesn’t realize how many bloggers like me are out there! But microblogging may be where part of my energy will go in the near future.
Dec 1, 2008 11:04 AM
I’ve been an on again, off again type blogger, and always a writer.
One thing I’m always careful to remember is that a blog is a content management system and, therefore, blogger and writer are not necessarily analogous. In other words, if you’re a blogger then you’re a writer, but not the other way around.
Aside from that, I think there are some truths above as to how the medium of blogging shapes the kind of writing a blogger produces. And I definitely agree that a blogger is, in many ways, more of a producer than a writer at, say, a traditional magazine or newspaper is.