Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Blogging and the Blogger-Reader Relationship:
[1]Alan Greenblatt in the San Francisco Chronicle has a good column on
the subject. Never mind the peevish-sounding headline (and always
remember that columnists and reporters don't write the headlines for
their stories, and generally aren't even consulted when the headline
is written) and focus instead on the body. An excerpt:
Habitual excuse notes [in which the writer sheepishly announces
that he or she has something better to do today and simply can't
come out and create] were starting to bug me until I realized that
blogs perform much the same functions that personal letters used
to, back in the days when the U.S. mail was associated with the
agile pony rather than the pokey snail. After all, 98.7 percent of
all personal letters ever written begin with the same apology. "I'm
sorry it's taken me so long to write, but . . . " . . .
The worst letters were exactly like the most useless blogs, filled
with daily trivia and accounts of hobbies or personal comings and
goings that only a mother could struggle through.
On the other hand, letters at their best had all the qualities that
make many blogs attractive. They provided the correspondent's
unfiltered and immediate impressions of the events and artifacts of
the day.
For example, the letters of the late actor John Gielgud, published
last year, read as if they were selections from a witty, catty blog
about film and the London theater. . . .
[L]ike letter writers of old, [blog] creators hope to forge a
connection with readers whose attention they have earned by dint of
their own insights or prose quality, not through affiliation with
some established publication. . . .
The letter analogy is of course quite incomplete (and I'm sure it's
not intended to be complete), but it captures an important point, I
think.
References
1.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/10/ING0UC4K431.DTL
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