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About this site
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A new section on the emerging blogosphere that's edited by Hylton Jolliffe, the founder, editor and publisher of Corante who believes blogging's more than mere fad and that what will flow from it will have major implications for media, marketing, distributed thinking and business in general.
Please send any tips, suggestions or reactions to Hylton.
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CORANTE ON BLOGGING: In media res
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By Hylton Jolliffe
Emily Eakin, in a piece in today's New York Times in which she compares bloggers to the pamphleteers of the past: "George Orwell... was not optimistic about the genre's prospects in an era dominated by newspapers devoted to what he perceived as an increasingly narrow range of mainstream opinion."
But, she continues, "Orwell may have been underestimating contemporary society. If he had lived to surf the Internet, for example, he might have been cheered to discover a flourishing new breed of pamphleteer: the blogger." |
Meg Hourihan: "Argh!" Earlier in the same post about John Wiley & Sons' write-up of We Blog on their site: "There's a piss-poor description of what the book's about." |
Ernie Svenson comments on the impact blogging will have on the law profession: "Things are clearly going to change, at least for lawyers who want legal news... the press simply can't keep up in this area." In fact, Ernie continues, "I predict that in about 3 years the mainstream media will rely almost exclusively on lawyer-bloggers to cover local legal events." |
Shelley Powers on her writing and some of the criticism she's weathered recently: "I've had some difficult times in the past few months, sometimes as a result of weblogging." On losing a good blogging friend: "Yes, this whole thing is virtual, but the friendship was real to me, and the loss is keenly felt." |
Doc Searls on Phillip Pearson's Blogging Ecosystem: "What's really cool is that the whole thing serves as a kind of collective blogroll: a bloggeist that isn't limited to any one blogger's faves." |
Morgan Sandquist on his attempt to introduce the word "masturblogging": [It] seems to have failed. And I thought it was so clever." The one comment: "Everyone is doing it, they just won't admit it." |
Christian Crumlish, in a Blogroots discussion, on the "journalism/blogging angle [that] is a bit of a red herring": "It reminds me of how book publishers and computer-book publishers in particular have always overpublished on topics related to... publishing. They sometimes mistake their own viewpoint for that of their readership." |
From the curriculum of the class on blogging at Berkeley's school of journalism on part of their charge: "What relationship do we create with those sites. Can readers respond to Weblog postings in a threaded discussion. Should the discussions be moderated. Do we invite experts to post directly to the Weblog." |
Matt Haughey on the redesigned Blogroots site: "We wanted to build a powerful, useful resource site for the weblog world, and I think we've come close to finally achieving that."
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Dan Bricklin, who says part of what animated him to put some money behind Blogger a year ago was that it was "a symbol of the genre": "Unlike the dot com bubble behind us, blogging is continuing to grow. The general public is starting to realize that it is a great means for individuals, organizations, and businesses to communicate and share timely information." |
Evan Williams comments on the Trellix news: "No one is going to own blogging any more than anyone owns website creation today. Thus, we can also focus on the next level."
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Kelly Hawes, the managing editor for the Facts section of the Houston Chronicle on Steve Olafson, the reporter just fired for keeping a pseudonymous blog: "[He] had a public trust as a journalist, and he violated that trust." |
Lloyd Trufelman and Laura Goldberg advise PR people on how to pitch bloggers: "Unlike beat reporters at typical news outlets, bloggers are extremely idiosyncratic in choice of subject matter and slant. In order to begin a conversation with one - and it should be viewed as a conversation, rather than a pitch - it is vital that you are well-acquainted with the interests of the blogger." |
Craig Burton, who hasn't blogged much of late: "From the lack of frequency, one could come to the conclusion that I thought blogging wasn’t important..." Not so, he says, "I just lost my groove there for a bit."
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Brad DeLong disagrees with Paul Krugman, saying that the reason Andrew Sullivan beats up the New York Times is because he "has decided to punish [it] for not publishing his stuff--and that the rest of the claque has fallen into line." |
Shelley Powers on the power Glenn Reynolds wields (and the general limitations of engaging in debate via blogs): "He is using his position of influence to control the flow of the discourse... If I taught 'How Not to Keep a Conversation Going, 101' this morning, Reynolds has been teaching the advanced course all day long." |
Cameron Marlow, creator of Blogdex, in an interview that's included in Chapter 3 of We Blog that's now online: "Weblogs are an inherently peer-to-peer communication tool... most webloggers are reading the same mass media every day, but hearing another person's personal perspective gives certain stories the persuasive character that they need to spread."
Another observation: "Meeting a blogger in person is a unique experience. After reading about an individual for months, your first encounter feels more like a reunion... examples from the blog find their way into conversation, almost as if they were collective memories." |
Meg Hourihan on the pending publication of We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs: "As someone who's wanted to write a book her whole life, you'd think I'd be more excited than I am... Maybe when it arrives... it will sink in and I'll feel excited, or proud, or horrified, or whatever it is that authors feel when they see their words on the printed page for the first time."
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Frank Paynter clarifies a point he made the other day about mild frustration he had with Blogger: "Ev has enough trouble. He doesn't need me creating a run on the blogbank because people think their posts are being lost!... I respect and acknowledge all the hard work that goes on in development and operationally to [Blogger]." |
Glenn Reynolds in a post about Doc Searls and others weighing in on possible military action: "The 'warblog' crowd is hardly a testosterone-drenched bunch of Rambos."
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Dave Winer, again, on his differences with Nick Denton and Glenn Reynolds over their recent comments about a possible invasion of Iraq: "I still admire [them] for having the guts to expose their thinking in public on the Internet for me and others to trash." |
Dave Winer defends the way he writes on Scripting.com: "Sometimes... something that's not politically correct, or inadvertently not politically correct, sneaks out." And then, he says, "before I can correct it, some blogger somewhere has launched a holy jihad..."
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Dave Eggers, who used some of the money he made from A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius to start McSweeney's Books: "I think that if you care about your writing, then you care about how it makes its way into the world, and self-publishing is one good way to make sure it comes out the way you'd envisioned." |
Dale Lature: "I've been Doc-blogged!... With the high regard in which I hold The Cluetrain crew, and Doc's own Weblog and many of his ideas and his ability to write, I am flabbergasted."
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Dave Pentecost, who says Doc Searls is a "god in this world": "Okay, so I'm late arriving at the party... A weblogger for month and I think I get it already."
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Matt Moore defends his relative break from blogging: "I was tired of thinking in blog all the time. I didn't say I'd never post again, nor do I think that this rises to the level of crisis; existential, missile, bubblegum, or otherwise."
An AP story he cites which speaks of a pending lawsuit: "These men, or should we say boys, promise so much but deliver so little. Their package just isn't what it seems. Having created a blog, updated it regularly and created a faithful following, they have no right to stop, take time off for personal reasons or even have a life away from their keyboard." |
Eric Olsen on BlogCritics.com, his soon-to-launch idea: "My goal as a blogger is not to impose my will upon the blogosphere - wrestling it to the ground and hogtying it - but to keep tossing ideas out there until something sticks."
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Jay Small, who notes MSNBC's not ditching their bulletin boards, merely moving them: "Don't tell me this is another move to legitimize the weblog format. It's just a move to monetize it."
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Frank Paynter says he's mad at Blogger for losing "goodness knows how many posts that I've pointed at recently, crispy critters one and all." On making money at blogging: "profit is way down the list [in importance] and service and what we used to call "goodness" in a systems sense is at the top." |
Simon Dumenco, who makes no mention of blogs, on over-editing: "At a time when readers are abandoning magazines by the millions, maybe it's time to get back to some basics." Writing, he says, "should be about living, breathing language and ideas, not rote editorial formulas cooked up in hermetically sealed office buildings." |
Glenn Reynolds engages further in a discussion between Nick Denton, Dave Winer and others: "If the term 'warblogger' means anything at all (and I'm not sure it does) recognizing unpleasant truths about war and self-defense is at the core of it."
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Ernie Svenson, better known as Ernie the Attorney, riffs on a blogger he likes: "Most of us bloggers (especially the lawyers) are doing the staccato post. TPB is working in a different medium entirely." |
Avedon Carol acknowledges a distinction between so-called legacy media and bloggers: "While a few of us can actually claim primary source credentials in our areas of expertise... we're usually just looking at stuff other people wrote..." |
Shelley Powers proposes something she's calling "Webblogging Consortiums" to help bear hosting costs: "Weblogging shouldn't be for those with lots of bucks or technical skill. It should be open to anyone that can find some way of connecting to the Internet, and has something to say."
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Dorothea Salo on "one more reason to blog": "Got a phone call today from a college buddy I haven’t heard from in a very long time... I emailed her my blog URL. The nice thing about this is that next time we won’t have to waste all the tedious time it takes to catch up... Multiply that by a lot of old friends (and even some family), and it’s a considerable saving in tedious 'catching up' time."
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Tom Shugart reflects on warblogging: "I do wonder--will blogging make any difference?" He continues: "Had the internet been available in the '60's--would the power of the protest have been deflected by people taking out their outrage in a flurry of blogposts? Would they have had the illusion--and only the illusion--of empowering themselves and changing history through the act of cross-blogging..."
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Jeff Jarvis, who runs Advance.net, Conde Nast's Internet unit, on MSNBC's decision to ditch forums and embrace blogs: "We love the forums because they are content from the audience in this, the medium the audience owns... Still, I understand MSNBC's switch to edited, selected weblogs."
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Meg Pickard, in a post about the origins of her site: "I've had a writing outlet since I was fifteen or so - and although it went through phases of personal revelation... it was mostly an exploration, a storytelling, a recounting of significant events, and a sharing of opinion. With myself." |
Arnold Kling on the role blogs could have played back when AOL linked up with Time Warner: "If there had been weblogs at the time of the merger, Douglas Rushkoff and others who did not think that AOL and Bugs Bunny represented much of a threat could have gotten a word in edgewise."
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Eric Alterman reacts to coverage of the MSNBC blog story: "While I think weblogs are a useful (and fun) manner to pass along information, criticism and create community, they are not a threat to the big boys." But, he also adds, "this response... is a pretty good demonstration of why weblogs are so useful." |
Glenn Reynolds comments on the silence over at Tapped, The American Prospect's blog: "Individual bloggers going on vacation is one thing, but you'd think that huge media organizations flush with cash would have substitute bloggers for their house blogs." |
Andrew Sullivan again: "One of the many joys of this website are the emails I get from people telling me stories about their lives, or sharing experiences that I would never otherwise have come across." |
Andrew Sullivan joins those taking a break from blogging: "After almost two years of regular writing with only a few scattered weeks off here and there, I'm going to take the rest of August off the blog. I have... much headspace to clear." But, he says, "there's now a vast and diverse blogosphere out there to read. So enjoy." |
Joan Connell, an executive producer at MSNBC: "Weblogs create a different kind of community... Like-minded people come together to talk about things...it's an issue-driven encounter." |
Nick Denton, on the news that MSNBC will be ditching its discussion boards for a new blog section: " |
Copyright 2002 Corante. All rights reserved. Terms of use
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