To understand what a blog really is, you must realize that “a blog is a broadcast, not a publication.” According to Sullivan, “the key to a good blog is to write unselfconsciously, to write with no limits and no boundaries, more or less, ‘to write as if you’re speaking’” (Sullivan). This concept of “writing as if your speaking” is especially unique, mainly because it shows us how bloggers broadcasts are rich in personality.
These rich broadcasts occur frequently, everyday, and seemingly multiple times a day. However, “the key to a good blog is not just saying what you think when you think it and not disguising it, but also airing the alternative arguments.” A concept you and I may find to be eccentric, yet is revolutionary to others. This idea of being able to be both innovative and knowledgeable of others ideas, closely related to an analogy I liked in the reading that goes like this: “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” (Sullivan).
The beat will always go on as long as it is to your own drum and in order to do that, your blog must have “linkage”. A statistic I found to be particularly interesting about the blogosphere stated, “it is not the total number of reader or page views, but the ‘authority’ you get by being linked to by other blogs” (Sullivan). This new world of linkage between thinking and writing and blogging has bolstered many new ideals and will continue to change the way in which we communicate forever. If others are reading your blog and taking something away from what you have to say, then you have seemingly created a successful blog. However, what you must know in addition to this is that in order for your blog to continue to thrive, you must be also able to create a balance between your own take on the world along with the take of others. Do you think we can do it?
Sydney,
ReplyDeleteI think you are right that what a blog allows us to have a more communal access to news. Linkage is the key to having a successful blogosphere. What frightens me, and I think Sullivan alluded to this in not-so subtle ways, is that in the end all a blog does is relay the thoughts that come into a blogger's mind. So if all you have is impulsive thoughts swirling around and being hyperlinked to each other than there is no sense of accountability for the righting. The economist pointed out that the number of blogs double every five months. Now that might be attributed to the number of teenagers who want their private thoughts to become public, but it also considers the unbelievable number of "scholarly" blogs, and scholarly is in quotes for a reason. There can be no authority or person to look to for legitimacy in the blogosphere for the same reason that allows them to prosper. There is no edit, there is no responsibility, a blog is quite simply a self-aggrandizing way for bloggers to share what they think to be important. There is a danger of the internet becoming inundated with facts that are actually conjecture.
Here is the safety net though: the reader. I really like what sullivan said about blogs being like jazz. There is inherent value in listening to it because it is intriguing and it is provocative, but it is in no way grounded. As he puts it "the audience talks over both." The readers ability to call the writer out on his misprints is key to the success of a blog. Even the majority of though these readers might be correctly characterized by their bombastic views and potentially offensive posts, there are some who have that scholarly authority that bloggers lack. Sullivan is wrong to say there is no editor, the editor is the reader, but rather than effect the post at present it effects the posts of the future.
Sydney, I really enjoyed reading your post. You highlighted a lot of great points in the article. I think what you sort of touched on and what really stood out to me was that blogs are so porous and transitory, which makes them unlike any other piece of print journalism. I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the need for a blog to foster both your personal ideas and the ideas of others. An eccentric idea may not go far if it is not respected or understood by the reader. All of the topics you discussed about the Sullivan reading were interesting, but something that I really want to highlight as we begin the first few stages of our own blog is what Sullivan discusses early on in the article when he mentions the instantaneous nature of blogging and how it is not daily writing, but hourly writing. He says, “…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.” We all have blogs that we read on a semi-regular basis and, a lot of times, we might notice errors. Some errors are not as obvious as others. I, for one, am very particular about grammar, so I may be more apt to catch a grammatical error than someone who has no interest in English. Nevertheless, it’s a problem that we are seeing in the world of blogs and it’s something to consider when we start blogging on our own. I loved when Sullivan compared blogging to extreme sports in athletics: “Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.”
ReplyDeleteBecause blogs are updated so frequently, it can sometimes be the intention of the writer to just simply get a post online instead of making sure that the facts are correct, that the sentence structures make sense, and that the sources for the piece are confirmed. These things are more common in older media forms (i.e. newspapers, reporters for magazines and news broadcasts, etc). Blogging is clearly a very public realm of media and it allows us to discover our own voice. Many of us will be hooked, just like Sullivan was in the first dew days of using a blog: “…I was hooked. The simple experience of being able to directly broadcast my own words to readers was an exhilarating literary liberation.” As the article continues, he explains the surreal experience of going back to September 11th and seeing how he was responding to the events at specific times during the day. He explains the importance of linkage and compares and contrasts blogging to newspaper articles beautifully. While reading all of this, I couldn’t help but ask myself how this new sort of writing will affect just that… writing. I still believe that there is a need for traditional writing styles that may not always be reflected in a “blogosphere.” As someone who enjoys reading blogs and who is excited to take part in this one, I have to stress my concern with making sure that we are thinking through the things that we post and the way that we are writing to the readers. Unlike other blogs, we shouldn’t be in a hurry to post, as we are given ample time for assignments. I think that blogs can be a great reflection on a person’s writing abilities, intelligence, and interest in certain topics and I hope that our blog does just that!
Sydney,
ReplyDeleteI found one of the most interesting parts of your blog post to be the question you raise in regards to a successful blog. You say that bloggers need to strike a balance between their personal views but also incorporate thoughts of others, especially their commentators. Very true. In today's blogosphere, it's extremely easy, and typically encouraged, for readers to comment on posts and send the author emails about their thoughts, whether they agree or disagree. Readers and bloggers seem to have a give and take relationship, a sort of symbiotic interaction that perpetuates the blog cycle and allows for the success of a blog. To answer your final question, I definitely think we can do it. Bloggers and readers have already demonstrated a balanced relationship and I think that this relationship will continue to thrive as blogs continue to permeate new media today.