I’d like to depart from politics
for the week and talk about something that is far more
interesting—and far more annoying—than the
John Bolton debate. I want to talk about blogging. Sometimes,
in passing, friends of mine refer to this column as
a blog. Because blogging is so new to the cultural vernacular,
it’s hard to know exactly how to define the process.
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But a trip to dictionary.com
yielded the following information: “Blog (v):
to author an online diary or chronology of thoughts,”
and “Blog (n): an online diary; a personal chronological
log of thoughts published on a Web page; also called
Weblog, Web log.”
Etymologically speaking, the word goes back as far
as, oh, 1999, when blogging kind of sort of came on
the scene. These days, you’d be hard-pressed to
find an American who doesn’t know what the word
means. In any case, Raw Story isn’t a blog, and
the reason it isn’t a blog is that the writing
here isn’t a ‘diary’ or a ‘chronology
of thoughts.’ The differences between blogging
and column writing have to do with process, research,
structure, and argument.
Take, for instance, a blog maintained by one of my
collegiate classmates. I won’t mention her name
here, as that would be cruel, but I will cite her blog
as the perfect example of unprocessed, unresearched,
unstructured, and unargued conversation. I will also
add that this particular individual submitted her blog’s
URL to our University’s class notes in lieu of
updating us on what she had been doing with her life.
Fair game, no? This unnamed individual writes, on her
May 19 entry, entitled, “Would You Date A Fireman?”
Today I was waiting by the M14 bus stop on Avenue
A...A big firetruck [sic.] was blocking the bus stop,
and I was about to ask one of the firemen milling
about if the bus might not stop there (I never take
that bus) because of the truck. Before I could say
anything, he asked, “You waiting for the bus?”
Duh. “Yes, I am.” “It’s a
beautiful day, why don't you just walk?” I would
have responded, but four more firemen appeared out
of nowhere. “Hey, I'm asking for my friend,”
one of the guys asked, and pointed to another fireman.
“What do you think of him? He’s single.”
So all of a sudden I was at the center of my very
own dating game, “Which Fireman Will Win This
Girl’s Heart?”
Ms. Anonymous goes on to explain that 1.) this encounter
gave her an ego boost and 2.) it doesn’t matter
because (giggle, giggle) she has a super-duper hottie
boyfriend anyway.
Is our Dating Game Darling entitled to her own Internet
space? Sure. Her entries, which chronicle the boring
and clichéd encounters of a post-collegiate New
Yorker with a mediocre publishing job, belong to her
and her alone. I wouldn’t dream of taking that
away from her. But, more specifically, is there a difference
between daily journal-ing and political opining? And
here is where I say, resoundingly: Yes.
Back to dictionary.com for a second, where I have
searched the word “columnist” and arrived
at the following entry: “Columnist (n): a journalist
who writes editorials.” So I search for “journalist”
(n: a writer for journals and newspapers) and “editorial”
(n: an article in a publication expressing the opinion
of its editors or publishers), and, in short, come to
determine that a columnist is not someone who “authors
and online diary.”
Don’t get me wrong. Some bloggers are professional
writers—Dan Kennedy of the Boston Phoenix, for
instance, maintains a newspaper-run blog called “Don’t
Quote Me”—and some bloggers have much more
to contribute than a discussion of how many firemen
they’ve made swoon in a day. But to confuse blogging
with column writing is to do a great disservice to the
work that goes into constructing a column.
That’s right. Work. As columnists, we are people
concerned with facts, figures, and format. We believe
that clever rhetoric cannot supplant reasoned debate
and we believe that a reliance on data helps cement
even the most ephemeral of arguments. There are codes
of journalism that we are compelled—indeed, required—to
abide by. If our anonymous blogging friend wants to
tell us that the world is flat in her personal web space,
we have no grounds to dispute her. But if I publish
a column asserting the same information as fact without
the basis for such a crazy assertion, I have a real
ethical dilemma on my hands.
In short, not all writing is the same, and not all
writing can be judged by the same standards. If a blogger
is smart, funny, and a liar, it doesn’t matter,
but, as The New Republic’s ex-employee
Stephen Glass knows all too well, being a smart, funny,
lying journalist is a different case entirely.
In a sense, the blogosphere detracts from the validity
of expressing opinion on paper. Surely everyone on the
planet has an opinion about something, and blogs make
it easier to voice said opinions. Worse, with more and
more opinions in circulation, it becomes harder to take
any of them seriously.
But—and this is what readers and writers alike
must remember—the goal of column writing is not
opining as much as it is structuring a cohesive argument.
There are transitions a writer must make, research a
writer must conduct, editing a writer must undertake
before a piece assumes its final and unmistakable shape.
And so it is the process that defines the product, and
not the other way around. So let them have their blogs,
but, for Heaven’s Sake, let’s not confuse
Anaïs Nin with H.L. Mencken.
Hannah
Selinger can be read each Tuesday on Raw Story .
