What journalists who blog think “blogging” is. Lizzie Skurnick (pseudonymous author of the literary blog
the Old Hag) almost got called up to the Show – the New York
Times actually asked her to write. But under their terms. And that’s the problem:
[T]he media who, after constantly treating me as an amusing quantity who, despite the zillions of print articles I have written, is still a blogger, while they, who are now blogging, because they crashed their whole goddamn field, are somehow not bloggers except for how maybe they are running blogs, want to tell me what to do.... You link wrong. You’re not funny.... You think posts are something you “pitch.” [...] You think other bloggers should respond to other bloggers, preferably in chin-stroking ways like “I appreciate your thoughts, Gwendolyn, yet I….” You want headlines maximized for SEO.... Worse, you seem to take blogging as some amusing shift you’ve been asked to do that is entirely within your powers. You are a fancy important journalist! You are an actual writer. OK, maybe you are. But you are sure as hell not a blogger any more than that dude with the novel in the drawer is a novelist.
(Via)
posted by joeclark
on Jun 14, 2010 -
101 comments
CBC Blogging Manifesto Tired of waiting for CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster, to come up with a blogging policy, CBC bloggers – including the infamous pseudonymous blogger
A. Ouimet – charge ahead and write one themselves.
posted by joeclark
on Aug 13, 2006 -
12 comments
Du-blog-ious Achievement Awards Marc Weisblott cannot even keep from slagging
himself: “Maintained a personal blog without permalinks, archives, or even dates on the posts, thus preventing the sort of critical scrutiny he performs on others. Barely earned more money at age thirty-one than he did at twenty-one. And – oh, yes – enough of a coward to not be able to compile a Worst Blogs of 2002 list without attaching himself to the end of the list. Or is that just unadulterated self-loathing?”
posted by joeclark
on Dec 26, 2002 -
8 comments
Orangina is the new orange All right, I tried to blog this and keep finding dead ends. Can someone please point me to permanent bookmarks of conversations (i.e., monologues) on A-list blogs like powazek.com and
n-list ones like psionic.nu declaring that "[colour] is the new
orange"? ¶ (At the Toronto bloggeur f2f, we engaged in ironic
discussion of the fact that our blogs are not on the A-list and never will be, though I argued that merely contributing to Metafilter gives us exposure among the A-list crowd in effect, a social-climber/arriviste argument for which I do not apologize. Miss
Emmajane wasn't present for the ironic part, however. I am familiar with the argument that one who blogs as a ploy for readership is a failure. I agree. But blogging and being the only reader is, frankly, onanistic. I speak as someone whose blog is linked to by a grand total of three others. I'm not sure there are ten people on earth who regularly read what I write. I'm OK with that, but I'd love to be more...
popular! Discuss. But give me the
orange link first.)
posted by joeclark
on May 1, 2000 -
23 comments
The Corporatization of Weblogs Has Begun, it is decreed The current
Editor & Publisher introduces blogging to its newspaper-editor audience and points out two blogs actually written by newspaper columnists. I do indeed agree that Weblogging is a viable new medium of expression for dead-tree media, and agree even more strongly that special-interest journalistic blogs are in desperate need. (I'm planning one myself, and wouldn't it be great to read dueling blogs on the same topic from rival newspapers?) I just worry that the column will have an
illocutionary effect, i.e., it will cause something to happen just by uttering words, rather like "I now pronounce you married." In this case the words I worry about are "The corporatization of Weblogs has begun." I can hear Rushkoff griping about the good old days already. And I'd gripe along with him.
posted by joeclark
on Mar 8, 2000 -
3 comments
