I. Bloggers blog to increase influence
I think most bloggers want others to adopt their opinion, whether it be on a sports team, fashion item, or political issue. Sure, there is a thrill to shouting into the darkness, but bloggers don’t obsessively track visit counts to make sure it got on the Internet. In the political world, this may take the form of supporting a particular candidate, a particular side of an issue, or an entire way of political thinking. However, the greatest thrill for many of us is to see/think that we’ve caused others to adopt our way of thinking. For many of us, one standard of quality of blogging is the impact one has.
II. Influence is a function of readership and quality. These tend to reinforce.
If you are a mental giant who could convince a snowman to visit Hawaii, but only talk with one person, your influence is limited. If you have an enormous bullhorn but very little credibility (say, like John Boehner), you will also be ineffective. Good blogging is a combination of both. Quality and readership can reinforce to an extent, though: a high-quality blog may gain readers thanks to word-of-mouth, and awareness of a wide readership will cause many bloggers to be meticulous in writing for their hard-won audience.
III. Expanding readership has a larger technical component than increasing quality
Influence may come from two sources, but they aren’t treated with equal attention by most bloggers. A blogger post cross-referenced Twitter with uStream with Facebook thrown in is very exciting for the many technical savants who blog. One may gain more readers with wider, multi-format exposure. However, this doesn’t necessarily do much to make your blog better, even if it is cooler. Writing and video make up a great blog. One of the most influential bloggers out there, Digby, has a very non-technical site with some of the best writing to be found. Her impact is a function of high-quality writing and nothing else, and she stands out for honing the writing above all else.
IV. Many bloggers focus mainly on one component of upgrading their influence
It’s just so much fun to ping-pong your cell phone with that service and this website so everything is in sync. How great to put together a poll and all that, to take instant photos and publish them…a lot more fun that doing a fourth pass over the transition sentences in a post. So when thinking about blogging, or talking about it, the techno stuff is highlighted to the expense of the basic writing.
The good news is that the best way to become a better blogger is to blog. I’d imagine many regular posters cringe at their first 3 or 4 posts because things have improved so much. However, if you ask most bloggers if they’d rather add a STV-style poll to their site, or read some reflections on how to write non-fiction, it probably wouldn’t be much of a contest. (Please note: I’m as guilty as anyone else on this…typos abound in my work.)
V. Improving blogging — mine, yours, newbies’ — probably has more to do with becoming better writers than just using flashier platforms
It ain’t sexy, but the drudgery of editing and proofing one’s posts, of establishing a voice, of trading some indignation for cool analysis makes blogging better. Everyone’s blogging at this point, and the format obstacles are becoming lower than the content obstacles. So perhaps next time there’s a blogging forum, we may want to leave the neato toys at home and work on the craft of writing. The medium shouldn’t be the message.
I’m not writing this as some superior writer — there are many better ones on this site. I’m just offering my thoughts on how I need to improve, and getting others’ reactions. At the state convention, the blogging discussion with the most “staying power” was the only one focused mainly on content — citizen journalism. I’d say that was because it was more sharply focused on impact, and something far more accessible.
Rare is the expert on what makes “better writing”, and here is an issue for us. The dedicated writers I know don’t tend to blog — they don’t like the format, may not even like the Internet at all. While some aspects are unique to the format (linking, for example), much are common to all forms of nonfiction writing, and blogging is ruled by emphatic amateurs. With some exceptions, raising the bar for our writing is a long-term exercise equal parts merciless criticism and natural selection, which means this will remain a slow process of improvement.
At the end, I’m not sure what the next step is. I think some work on style and content over format may not be a bad thing here. Actually, a monthly seminar by, oh Dan Kennedy, would be a great thing for all of us regulars on this site. What do you think?
which 4 political blogs are strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity?
Kos, MyDD, Ezra and Huffington Post?
There’s lots of celebrity fluff on HuPo…not exactly much gravity there…
leavened with belly laughs from my friend Jason Linkins.
“Coffee John Coffee maam,like the drink only not spelt da same.”
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p>Really I feel like John for his ability to see the world for what it really is. It just don’t sell though this Armageddon theme. Truth doesn’t have a market niche, a target demographic and has no effect on the MTV generation.
I’m surprised sometimes when bloggers do not identify themselves as writers.
I’m surprised when someone who writes doesn’t blog in some fashion. Especially folks that write nonfiction or journalism. They tend to be curious sorts who like to put the written word to subjects. Blogs give them an unlimited forum (length and subject) to do that for whatever strikes their fancy.
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p>Blogging also requires such a writing habit that many amateurs can’t keep up. So those who already have developed the habit seem to be more suited to sustaining an interesting blog.
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p>”A writer writes, always.”–Larry Donner, TMFTT
…that industry wouldn’t be struggling.
I want to be Atrios. His writing is particularly sharp. I emulate his use of titling. He says much in few words.
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p>Beyond the writing, Atrios has a number of recurring features: simple answers to simple questions, blogger ethics panel, deep thought, meanwhile, etc. These function as in-jokes and markers that one is part of an imaginary community.
And I mean that positively. The problem with schtick is that you have to stick with it faithfully for a long period of time….I don’t have that kind of attention span.
but what he does is Twitter… let’s all be honest with ourselves.
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p>I’m not going to take anything away from it, I just think that he should on occasion expand, if even by just a little.
At his best, his brevity is poetic. It’s like you can’t cut a word, and you can’t add a word or you’ll break the flow of the sentence.
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p>But sometimes … you’re right.
His writing is certainly an art and I’m not trying to take away from it. I love all his posts… I just wish that, on occasion, he’d add a little more beef once in a while. I don’t want less of his trademark posts, but there’s a lot of information and analysis squeezed in his head and I wish he’d expose more of it a little more often.
They both have different focuses. I love reading Atrios specifically for his emphasis on community development and public transportation, Ezra’s better on issues like health care and the economy. I end up knowing the gist of what Atrios is trying to get across through reading his links, but I don’t always have time to read more than a few paragraphs. Sometimes I don’t have the time for the 15 page story that compares two separate towns and how they deal with issues like public transportation and housing density.
I can see now why you don’t like Atrios’ terseness.
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p>”That’s what Ezra Klein is for,” is not meant with mathematical literalness. It’s not the case that everything Atrios sketches with a few words Ezra Klein dutifully fleshes out with many.
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p>Instead I was saying that there are plenty of writers (Digsby, Somerby, Ritholtz, DeLong, Krugman, Benen, Yglesias, Baker, both Coles, Greenwald, and Marshall, as well as Klein) that spell out Atrios’ indications at length. In fact, Atrios’ value includes his highlighting these people.
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p>Similarly, the witty comments left on Atrios’ blog abound with sly references and metonymy, but they are not to everyone’s taste. Exactly because they aren’t literal, metonymy and metaphor are the engines of language creation; they make the naming of new things possible.
I just also like, once in a while, for him to expand. Sometimes he actually does. I think he should just do it a teensy bit more.
Atrios has made a huge impact in the way that I write on my blog. Look back years ago and compare them to what I write today. The difference is Atrios – I never read him when I started blogging, that’s a more recent phenomenon.
Much of the language of the left blogosphere was either coined or popularized by Atrios. Beyond just language, Atrios was instrumental in shaping the consensus on the left.
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p>Take one of his phrases, “Dirty Fucking Hippie”: it encapsulates a powerful critique of the media in just a few words and it is a critique many of us have come to agree with.
My critique has nothing to do with subtraction, only the occasional addition on things he’s blogging about that a lot of other people aren’t.
I’ve half-completed summing up my social networking break out group… and it’s just so damn long!
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p>Longer than this. By a lot.
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p>I’m going to post it anyway… I just have to (gulp) finish it. (Yes, it’ll be even longer!)