This month’s Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists discussion asks “Have you fallen out of love with blogging?”
Unfortunately I can’t really answer the main question, as I’ve never been “in love” with blogging. I certainly never felt the strong pull that some did ((*Cough*Dave*cough*)).
On with the tangent
One thing that looks like it isn’t helping young journalists getting truly interested ((This comes from, you must understand, a terribly researched and utterly non-scientific survey.)) is the inclusion of blogging in journalism school courses. For example take this selection of blogs from University of Lincoln journalism students:
The brown ones are blogs that haven’t been updated in 60 days. For some of the others, they’re only saved because of a recent post after months of neglect.
These are just the ones that I’ve put in my feed reader because I think it’s likely they’ll be updated again. From the original list I had, I’ve excluded ones that hadn’t been updated in 2009. (I’ve also excluded Bradley King‘s regularly updated Hoof It, because I can’t even pretend to be interested in football.)
Roughly half of these blogs are non-updated ‘dinosaurs’. Most of the ones by first-year students also seem to have been created for assessment as part of the journalism course.
On her course blog Samantha Viner writes that:
[T]his is for my assessment, a minimum of 6 entries of at least 150 words each. (Link)
That isn’t blogging as self-motivated publishing. That’s work.
I’m generalising, but the kind of blogs that people want to read and—more importantly—want to write, are the ones that come out of enthusiasm and interest.
Or, to steal a phrase from John Gruber and Merlin Mann, the blogs that are the product of “obsession times voice“.
That’s why I read their sites: because they’re obviously passionate about what they say, and they have a distinctive way of saying it. By requiring 900 words spread over six instalments you suck all the meaning out of it. And all the fun.
I can see why this has happened at Lincoln. It’s sensible to have students that understand blogging, for many reasons—technological literacy, the increasing use of “new” and “social” media ((Threw up a bit in my mouth.)), ways to interact and communicate with others, etc. Feel free to add your own. I can probably even think of how they were made (fully) aware of it and its potential, and the person who convinced them that familiarity with the practice was a good idea. ((Dave, I’m looking at you again. It was that bloody guest lecture last year.))
That person fully embodied “obsession times voice”. He oozed it. It was unsightly at times. (Kidding. Sort of.) That kind of passion would surely have inspired students to have a go themselves, at least a little more than having it imposed from above. ((For the record, the thing that convinced me to blog somewhat regularly was buying a domain. “I’ve bought it, now I better do something with it,” was the logic.))
Hang on a second
I can finally answer the TNTJ question.
I love blogging. I love it because I can write stuff like this, put it online for nothing, and share it with anyone who’s interested. Twitter’s great. But it’s just another outlet for “obsession times voice“, the same as a blog.
On Twitter you get stuff like this, this, this, and this.
On blogs you get stuff like this, this, this, and this.
And I’m sure you can find examples that show why you love, loved, or will love them. They’re just methods of publishing, so publish away.
Original WordPress comments:
Mindy McAdams:
Yes — “It’s sensible to have students that understand blogging, for many reasons” — but if they treat it as a class assignment (“a minimum of 6 entries of at least 150 words each”), they will never understand blogging, will they?
I have taken it for granted that assigning students to create and keep a blog is the best way to get them to understand blogging. But maybe there is a better way. Hm. Thinking about that now …
