Tentative thoughts of mine on what you say, Chris, is that
you are probably right IF we consider blogs a form of journalism
only. I use my blog for that, at times, but also as simply a diary-like
public storage place for my thoughts. Also, at times, for a Serious
Publication Venue for that for which I can find no other publisher,
which means just about everything I write. It's a place for rough
drafts, too.
Even then, though, I can see how your advice would be useful, if
one had time to follow it, for it would lead one to break up one's Serious
Long Thoughts into digestible screen-sized chunks. Maybe the best
way to blog would be to have a preliminary blog where one stores
thoughts uncritically, and a Front-Line Blog where one carefully
inscribes one's polished best thoughts in small portions. I'd almost be
willing to try this if I thought I could attract more than five or six regular
readers.
--Bob
------- Original Message -------
From : Chris Jones[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent : 3/25/2010 1:09:32 AM
To : [log in to unmask]
Cc :
Subject : RE: blog writing
Since I have been doing this blog thing I have a feeling that most blogs
I have seen appear, shall we say, not really understanding the media
format that they are using.
What I remember seeing most in blogs are long pieces of prose, over
several screen pages. From my perspective, including my formal training,
this seems very much a mistaken understanding of the media you are
writing with, in this case a blog.
Blogs need shorter, single screen pieces. Blogs are more like news paper
or magazine journalism, where even with feature articles, this can be
broken up to screen size chunks.
Not sure if this makes sense and of course to be fair most blog writers
don't have the sort of training I have had access to. Long pieces of
prose are the way most people seem to write in without questioning the
form. Journalism works with small chunks of text pasted together, so
requires a writing technique made available only to a few trained
professional writers. There's a problem here but can't expand more.
(Type out a short news article, that is a good way to get a feel for
this style of writing. The inverted pyramid; where, when, what, how, why
eeks hope that's correct. You delete from the end to fit around the
ads.)
--
I have chronic fatigue syndrome so I may be delayed in my reply. Just to
let you know, that's all. Chris Jones.
Blog: http://abdevpoetics.blogspot.com/
|