Sherry Chandler » On blogging
On blogging
Though I don’t link to them here because this blog is ostensibly about poetry and culture in Kentucky, I read a handful of liberal political blogs almost every day. That fact, I think, sort of makes me a wonk. I know more about a lot of political issues than probably 99% of the public, though what I know has a definite liberal slant. Sometimes getting my news slanted that way can blind-side me a little — I really thought John Kerry was winning the 2004 election — but not often.
The one blog I read every day is Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo. Although Josh is more of a DLC Democrat than I am, more hawkish, I go there for actual reporting, what Marshall calls “opinion journalism.” Other liberal bloggers are more interested in politics and political maneuvering. Marshall aptly compares them to pamphleteers. Marshall is interested in issues, in news analysis. And he operates by a sort of grass-roots open-source reporting, by tapping into the expertise and local knowledge of his thousands of readers across the country. I find that very attractive.
He describes himself as “disciplined” and that is attractive too. We have discussed here how many bloggers have what one might call diarrhea of the keyboard.
He has been very successful and has turned a simple blog, Talking Points Memo, into a multi-facted “blog empire,” as described in this article in the Los Angeles Times.
I draw your attention to this article, however, not to hype Marshall (I don’t think he needs my hype) but because of this passage I found in it on the nature of blogging:
BLOGGING has famously unleashed the opinions of multitudes. There are, by very rough count, 60 million bloggers around the world today. Some projections have that number nearly doubling again this year. Depending on which side of a vitriolic divide you fall — that is, whether you think this is good or bad — this represents either the end of civilization or the rise of true democracy.
There are blogs for baseball teams, for fast food, for God and for Satan; there are lots of blogs on politics and Hollywood and at least one that deals exclusively with pharmaceutical industry research. There are hundreds of blogs on Iraq and more than you would imagine in Mongolia.
Though the numbers and breadth of blogging are indeed astonishing, it’s not at all clear what the numbers mean, if they mean anything at all. Much of what constitutes the phenomenon of blogging is apt to be inconsequential for the simple but powerful fact that nobody reads most of them. That is, aside from their authors, literally nobody.
Most of these blogs are the creations of individuals who have a passion to write, usually about a single subject, that subject often being themselves. Some of them are truly horrible and, thankfully, short-lived. The passion burns out.
Others, though, are remarkably good.
The article, written by Terry McDermott, whom I take to be male, goes on to talk about the really good sports blogs he knows about.
All in all, however, McDermott can’t help but sneer just a little at blogs that aren’t about important subjects like politics or sports. It is probably true that most people don’t have the talent or the interest to blog for any length of time, though I see no reason to belittle blogs that talk about the blogger’s life. Ordinary people are — well, there are no ordinary people. Everybody’s got a story to tell and everybody tells the story in his/her own way. Sometimes telling your story helps you understand it. People have long had an urge to record their lives in journal and diaries, to leave artifacts.
The personal blogs I read teach me a lot about what it means to be human. They are “about” a lot of things, though mostly sort of arty, I guess. Their approaches to the art of blogging are as unique as they are. I hope their writers blog or journal on for years.
I invite you to explore my blog roll. You’ll meet some fun people there.
Related article in the NYTimes: Look at Me World!: Self-Portraits Morph Into Internet Movies.
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2 Comments
1. Rebecca Clayton replies at 18th March 2007, 3:07 pm :
I’m often impatient with the writing style of political opinion blogs. In fact, although I read your blog for the poetry and Kentucky culture, I count on you to let me know if the pundits have somethinig I need to read. I thought I ought to let you know how much I appreciate your wonk-work, although the poetry and the pictures of Possum are more fun. (How can one cat be so many different colors?)
2. sherry replies at 18th March 2007, 7:23 pm :
Thank you, Rebecca. I have a great horror of preachiness — and yet I can’t resist. Kick my ankle if I get carried away, would you?
As for Possum, she is oddly colored. My husband says she’s a “smoke,” which means she has a heavy white undercoat like swansdown or something that gleams through her darker overcoat. She never gets wet to the skin. And then she has that red/brown on her back — I’d say that’s sunburn but she goes out least of any of our cats. It was her huge round eyes that got her the name. Though maybe Wol would have been more appropriate.
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