This is fun. A real debate on this site…
I have to take issue with Man Ching’s argument. While I really liked his observation that blogs are a great opportunity to create meaning and context for what we link to, I don’t think quick “link and dump” blogging is necessarily irrelevant. It gets back to Man Ching’s “filtering” comment, where bloggers collate and index information for their readers.
But what I really like about this both embraces Man Ching’s central premise while also flying in the face of it. I love the fast turnaround of blogging, that I can go from initial idea to published article in mere hours. Something that always bugged me about WOYP as a weekly column was that that was too long a cycle for a lot of news in handheld media. Something would happen, usually a product announcement, on Monday afternoon after I’d already posted the colum for that week. Then I’d have to wait seven days to comment on it, and by then the story was cold. Now I can comment on handheld news as it happens, rather than waiting.
It also gives me the ability to write and post articles while I’m still excited about working on them, before they become work. For example, I had the idea for “The Sony Way” while talking to a friend on the phone this morning in the car. Shortly thereafter I stopped for lunch and wrote the article, and then posted it when I got home, all before getting ready to go to work today. Less than three hours from initial idea to publication, and contrary to Man Ching’s suggestion that “time is needed to allow the reshaping of thoughts before publication,” I’ve been writing about this stuff long enough to know that the article I posted today wouldn’t have changed significantly had I allowed a week for it to simmer.
I’d just as soon say today what I mean today. If something else occurs to me tomorrow, I’ll blog about that, too. For now, my writing output is up, I’m coming up with new ideas again, both fiction and nonfiction, and writing is fun again. That’s more than enough for me.
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