I don’t like the blogging format. I’m not a link and dump kinda guy. Filtering is a good thing, and time is the ultimate arbiter of worth, if one spends it wisely. The corollary to the idea that the wide open net fosters artisanal communication (that is, the combining of textual, visual, and aural means of expression - something that is more personal than either a phone call or an IM, or even a letter) is that not everything is worth the time to digest. A list of interesting things to see seems to me an ill-considered use of the blog, although such a beast is not without purpose.
There is a reason one draws attention to a new PDA, a new graphics card, a new event in the world. Implicit in such a list is the idea that the link poster found the item of interest, and therefore worth one’s time to see his likes. Such filtering works, but lacks polish. The links-page dooms the blogging format to remain forever fetal. Time is needed to allows reshaping of thoughts before publication.
Immediacy is thought to be the reason of being for the blog; I say it is uncensored expression. Fast is not good; I submit the United States presidential election of 2000. Having Ted Koppel or Tom Brokaw announce who received the Presidency lends such an aura of legitimacy it becomes difficult to counter. Without the declaration of a winner, it would be easier for both aggrieved parties to ask for a recount. The rush to break the story allowed the ‘winner’ to sit smugly and laugh at the cry baby, before letting the close count be allowed. Who knows, one may even think that the Florida Electoral Commission would have itself asked for a recount. The rush to be first by the television news is (although these mistakes are made also by print news) and was senseless.
Television is such a poor medium for information transfer that it really is unfair for me to carp. In addition to the need to be first, news anchors are beholden to not to the duty to report events faithfully, but to sell ad space. Television needs advertisements, and so are beholden to the need to attract sponsors. News is not necessarily, on television, to sell ads. Newspapers have a slightly different pressure; they need to attract sponsors but what they sell to ad-men is a ‘habit’. They are delivering some hundreds of thousands of readers who have a daily ritual of cracking open a stack of dirty, musty smelling paper to advertisers. (I attribute this insight into the difference between TV and print news to Leonard Koppett’s The Thinking Fan’s Guide to Baseball.) A depth of information must be provided, and accurately, in order to build a reader’s habit of reaching for that specific paper for news. In short, it is true that the print news provides longer details (but then are subject to the same pressures of attracting advertisers as any other medium.)
The blogger is freed from the need for sponsorship, and has no constraints aside from himself. This is why I think the true power of the blogging medium lies and depends on the individual’s power of discrimination and presentation. Having merely a page of links is not good enough. A caption for each link is still insufficient. What I expect is that not only must one react to received events, but he should seek it if not create them. Merely noting items of interest uses this resource poorly; the blog, more than any other medium, allows for meaning to be expressed. The impetus to such musings can still be driven by events, by those very items of interest. The business of blogging is to convince others to dwell on what the blogger feels is meaningful, and he convinces by being thoughtful, which needs time. The worst blogs are merely a storehouse of immediate tidbits oftrivia and consumer items.
So there is nothing left for me to do but do, to try post few links and write more essays. I suppose there is the need for filler and pacing. It seems pretentious to post a lengthy essay every few days; the day is short for me and for readers. I suppose as a stimulus to writing, posting links and a short anecdote is not the worst thing for a writer. It keeps the habit going, and does provide a small service. I just want to avoid becoming one-note blogger, as it were. For a good idea of the pacing I aim for and what a good blog should be, try Alex Ross’s. He’s the resident music critic for The New Yorker.
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