Link: This short piece says a lot about what blogging should be
This hits a note close to home. A couple weeks ago, I was sitting and chatting with Mike Henderson, Wolfy, and he was saying that too often, arguments (debates, as I refer to them) online were a little too all over the place. I answered back that I thought that was the point of online conversation—that all thought was iterative, and the perfect blog post and the perfect comment didn’t necessarily exist—that all debate was based on the last thing said. That’s the beauty of the ongoing conversation online, as I see it. Granted, this isn’t necessarily “investigative journalism,” but it is something that can be equated to what’s being said here. All online conversation offers the opportunity to drift off-topic, seemingly, when what’s really happening is that the people involved are thinking through their positions and adjusting to what they see as the point of the moment. That’s a big deal. Whenever anything is put into print it’s over. Either you write a perfect article, or a flawed one. That’s that. And a lot of people think that’s the way it should be. In a generation, that’ll be laughed at. I think we should laugh at it now. (via Journerdism)
Comments
I think I agree with what you wrote, however I also have to recognize that neither of us always does a good job of operating in that SOP. On twitter and blogs I try to go from point to point with a connection between the two and I see a lot of people making—at least what I see as—unconnected leaps.
While looking for examples of times i did things that way, I found we only get half way there:
http://www.iamindisposed.com/blog/2008/11/20/budding-unr-columnist-suffers-career-setback-from-ann-coulter/
http://www.iamindisposed.com/blog/2009/01/02/nevada-new-media-right-where-right-when/
http://www.iamindisposed.com/blog/2008/06/18/washoe-rtc-bicycle-pedestrian-advisory-committee/
But that’s just on my blog…
-M
Jun 25, 02:49 PM
All of those conversations have a lot of outside context thrown in. You can never assume you know the whole context, and looking back at those posts I get the feeling you’re equating them with the full context. We had all had online and offline conversations about each of those things, if I recall correctly, and that stuff makes it into posts and comments. I think my point remains salient here—that all of it is a way of figuring out thinking and all of it adds to the context as well. See? I just did it again.
Jun 29, 03:54 PM
So, an iterative argumentative journalistic attention disorder among the socially distracted. Cool. Hey, what’s up with the MJ protests in Iran’s Transformer 2 election review that I think is total BS?
Jun 30, 02:52 PM
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