Ben Brown (of So New Media) thinks we're due for a book about how to stop blogging:
Isn't that the thing that like 50 people are writing 100 different books about? Seems like overkill to me. What I'd really like to see is a book about how to STOP blogging. With twelve steps. I'd really like to see groups of bloggers all over the country getting together, drinking lots of coffee and smoking lots of cigarettes while taking turns to say, "Hi, My name is Chester Phillips and I JUST CAN'T STOP BLOGGING."
categories: memewatch metablog
11:13:12 PM 
say what []
Meg's recent column (see previous post) sports a cross-link to a May 31 item by science-fiction writer and bOing bOing editor Cory Doctorow that is also part of O'Reilly's Blogging Essentials, due out any day now. In it he describes the benefits he derives from blogging, calling his blog his "outboard brain" (much as Dori calls her blog Backup Brain).
Cory's a great writer. His vivid imagery paints clear pictures in my brain, so it was tough picking any single passage to quote here (in other words: read the whole thing!), but I did particularly like this part:
Blogging begets blogging. I blog because I'm in the business of locating and connecting interesting things. Operating a popular blog gives people an incentive to approach me with interesting things of their own devising or discovery, for inclusion on Boing Boing. The more I blog, the more of these things I get, as other infovores toss choice morsels over my transom. The feedback loop continues on Boing Boing's message boards, where experts and amateurs debate and discuss the stories I've posted, providing depth and context for free, fixing the most interesting aspects of the most interesting subjects even more prominently in my foremind.
categories: memewatch metablog
5:17:51 PM say what []
In her Megnut column at O'Reilly Net, Meg suggests that the time has come for companies to hire professional bloggers to project their news and outreach into the blogosphere:
It's time to take blogging to the next level and that starts with paying people to produce high-quality, focused blogs for commercial Web sites. Until that happens, people will continue to view Weblogs as little more than personal diaries, or just another form of Usenet. Until we create a financial structure to enable the creation and maintenance of professional blogs, we won't see the best, next generation of Weblogs.I'm not sure I agree with this, exactly (and I see from my aggregator feed that Dave Winer has his doubts as well). For one thing, I don't see how this would differ from someone in the marketing department of a company maintaining the What's New page for their public-facing site.
If the difference is in the quality of the writing or some intangible expertise of the blogger, then aren't we once again confusing the medium for the people who happen to be using it. Does blogging make good bloggers or do good bloggers take it upon themselves to make their blogs?
I'm not saying there can't be a business model or even a professionalism attached to blogging, but I think this bears more thought. Otherwise, it's a little like saying that each company should hire an opinion editorialist or a librarian. These might be good ideas in specific cases but the argument breaks down when taken as a generality.
Underlying Meg's point seems to be another important one, the question of sustainability that has come up after each successive wave of Internet enthusiasm. As the size of the blogosphere grows and the novelty wears off, will people continue to do it for free or for the tangible benefits of notoriety or "thought leadership"?
I know that for me blogging solved an earlier problem: the tedious work of updating my web pages scaled up in a linear way with the size of the archive, so the blog mechanism reduced the friction associated with refreshing a site. Of course it did not eliminate the effort entirely, but the labor that remains is much more focused on the writing process and the content itself.
Still, as the scale continues to grow (not just for me personally, but taking all blogging together) even the slightest amount of friction can be like that grain of sand in your shoe on a ten-mile hike. And when it's no longer fresh or cutting-edge or maybe when it isn't as much fun anymore, people blogging voluntarily will opt to stop.
If it's your job and it isn't any fun anymore, that's a whole different problem.
categories: memewatch metablog
5:13:12 PM say what []
I'm attempting now to include a list of the categories associated with each entry, following a pointer from Matthew Ernest to a script by Marc Paschal. For me, this is like following a recipe without really understanding the stove, so if it doesn't work I hope it doesn't screw up the legibility of the entries.
categories: metablog
1:14:16 PM say what []
categories: metablog
8:56:38 AM say what []
Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment this morning notes that the Washington Post is stepping on Joshua Micah Marshall's brand:
Today Marshall notes that the Washington Post has begun running an online column with the name "Talking Points." Talking point for Post editors: Time to rethink that.
8:35:40 AM say what []
