Undercurrent

Andrew Revkin’s blog Dot Earth is a model for how journalists can use the blog format in reporting. Now Revkin leaves the New York Times with some well chosen words of advice:

I’lll keep blogging, of course. Frankly, I consider it an unavoidable responsibility of communicators. It has not been easy to blog, particularly while synchronizing that effort with ongoing print work. Through moderating tens of thousands of comments, I’lve had to deal with some angry people not interested in learning, but far more individuals with a thirst for community and understanding and a willingness to encounter contrary views as part of that quest. In many ways, this kind of two-way communication is well suited to the implicit complexities and uncertainty attending life on a crowding planet that is showing signs of strain from the blazingly fast expansion of this human experiment.

Lisa Goldman doesn’t write often enough on her blog, but when she does, it is always worth reading: Wartime tales from Gaza and Israel. I have problems thinking of someone who grasps the “reported blog” genre better than she does.

Signs are many that news sites are finally discovering that they should and must link to outside sources — as reported in the NYT. Some interesting news here: “The New York Times will soon offer its online readers an alternative home page with links to competitors.”

Kristine Løwe revisits the editors’ blog that she organized for the Norwegian Editors Associations conference a year ago. That was fun and an interesting experience. But as she says, that blog was quickly abandoned and forgotten. Today I found myself at this year’s editors conference, and no one mentioned that blog. But in a session where the editors should come up with ideas on how to increase their openness, editor-blogging was brought up once more. Terje Angelshaug, reader ombudsman at Bergens Tidende and the only one in Norway with this job, proposed blogging or a regular webpage where editors meet readers and explain editorial choices and policy. After group discussions, there were differing views on this idea. One group’s conclusion was that with the busy schedule of chief editors there’s just not enough time to blog regularly. And they also feared that such a blog would be boring (a quite astonishing remark from people who are supposed to be responsible for producing engaging journalism, in my opinion!). But another group was more positive; here an editors’ blog or a perpetual chat session with readers was recommended. Well, we’ll see, then. For the time being, Pål Hivand’s toon comment says it all. The blog was finished last year, right??

UPDATE May 8. There’s a discussion about this topic on Eirik Newth’s blog (in Norwegian).

This is why I’ve always been skeptical to the idea of blogging for a living:

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

The health risk is not the only reason, though. Paid blogging as it is portrayed in the New York Times story, sounds to me more like round-the-clock news agency reporting or the assembly-line-style breaking news production at news websites. Blogging as it should be is — for me — something else completely: taking new ideas and thoughts for a test-drive, experimenting with writing in a loose and unpretentious and informal way that is impossible in a paid environment, even taking days off from blogging if I don’t feel that I have anything to say there and then. Actually, it’s a way of escaping from tedious work, so it’s really ironic if people substitute the assembly line for the sweatshop!

24/7 blogging about something you’re very interested in can be fun for a while, as several sources note in the NYT story, but then you have to earn your living in another way — and return to “free” blogging.

For a scholarly journal, the recently published volume of First Monday has some really superb titles. Who can resist headlines such as “Loser generated content” or “Interactivity is evil”?

“Maybe it’ls time for a “slow blog” movement,” suggests Andrew C. Revkin in a post on the (excellent!) New York Times blog Dot Earth. Revkin has a very good point. Again and again we can observe this reflex-like reaction to statements and soundbites that are often already taken out of their context, such as the Bill Clinton quote Revkin refers to. No, it doesn’t seem like many people take the trouble to read transcripts to see for themselves what was actually said. But how much has this to do with blogging specifically? You could argue that politicians, pressure groups and what have you jump on such opportunities very willingly, and are in turn quoted by the media. The bloggers can of course join in and amplify the effect. On the other hand, the web has also made the opposite effect possible, the long tail, if you will. After a while, corrections and new interpretations can get “play” and be noticed, in the way that I noticed Revkin’s post and thought about it. Oh, and since the post is a few days old, this response must be proof that slow blogging is possible!

Borrowed the headline from Sarah Boxer. OMG (or ÅMG), I think it could be an advantage not to have English as a first language when blogging in English. Just have to exploit it more instead of writing like we learned in school. I wonder how the blog language of Norwegian-Americans on the prairie sounds. Lots of ja, ja, ja, like in “Fargo”?

Wonkette has some urgent and brilliant political analysis on the Ukraine election:

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is claiming victory in Sunday’ls national elections (in Ukraine) and the Orange Revolution blah blah blah oh my god she is still smoking hot.

It doesn’t get any worse in the commentaries. Tymoshenko’s website must be the most photo-heavy of any politician. OK… get serious now… here are the official results… (via Global Voices!).