Recommended: Paddy Johnson's takedown of the New York Times' "Screens" blog, for the crimes of banality, bogus ironic distance, and, least pardonable of all, light posting. Blogging is a particular knack; not everyone has it and not everyone is driven to post every day. As Steve Gilliard has often pointed out, going to the "right" schools and meeting the "right" people was a prerequisite for success under the old media, gatekeeper model. Once you schmoozed or credentialed your way into one of those gigs, it was yours to command and audiences were yours to bore forever. With blogging anyone with talent can find an audience without going through the usual career abasement, but the downside, if it is one, is you're only as good as your last party. But whether the itch to blog waxes or wanes, it's supposed to be about your passion(s). It's not about rattling off a long list of current video formats and trends ("web video, viral video, user-driven video, custom interactive video, embedded video ads, web-based VOD, broadband television, diavlogs, vcasts, vlogs, video podcasts, mobisodes, webisodes, mashups and more"), as the "Screens" blogger does, and then apologizing for it by breezily calling it all "senseless" (as in, "we make sense of the senseless"). That just won't wash when people are hungry for information, amusement, and some kind of honest context.
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Recommended: Paddy Johnson's takedown of the New York Times' "Screens" blog, for the crimes of banality, bogus ironic distance, and, least pardonable of all, light posting. Blogging is a particular knack; not everyone has it and not everyone is driven to post every day. As Steve Gilliard has often pointed out, going to the "right" schools and meeting the "right" people was a prerequisite for success under the old media, gatekeeper model. Once you schmoozed or credentialed your way into one of those gigs, it was yours to command and audiences were yours to bore forever. With blogging anyone with talent can find an audience without going through the usual career abasement, but the downside, if it is one, is you're only as good as your last party. But whether the itch to blog waxes or wanes, it's supposed to be about your passion(s). It's not about rattling off a long list of current video formats and trends ("web video, viral video, user-driven video, custom interactive video, embedded video ads, web-based VOD, broadband television, diavlogs, vcasts, vlogs, video podcasts, mobisodes, webisodes, mashups and more"), as the "Screens" blogger does, and then apologizing for it by breezily calling it all "senseless" (as in, "we make sense of the senseless"). That just won't wash when people are hungry for information, amusement, and some kind of honest context.
- tom moody 7-26-2006 9:41 am