Kynn Bartlett, chief technologist for Idyll Mountain and author of CSS in 24 Hours, among many other things, invited the students taking his Blogging Basics Online Course to ask me some questions. So here goes:
What’s your blog about? Who is the audience?
I began a blog, New Media Musings, in May 2001, and it’s still my only blog. I get about 3,000 visitors on a good day. It began as a platform to sound off about developments in online journalism, but it has widened in three directions since then, covering the rise of participatory media and new technologies; the issues of copyright, piracy and digital rights (which I’m covering for a book I’m writing); and politics.
The audience is, first, myself. A writer writes, and I feel I’ve made a difference when I spout off on a topic I feel passionately about. The other audience is the blogosphere: strangers who find my writings on sundry topics through a Google search and regulars who stop by to hear the latest about what I’ve written about in one of those four vertical silos (journalism, new enabling participatory technologies, digital rights, and current events or politics).
What’s your career background? How did you get into blogging and why?
I was a newspaper reporter and editor for 19 years before joining the dotcom boom as a senior editorial manager for four years. I was also the first new media columnist for the American Journalism Review, and the first regular columnist for the Online Journalism Review. I got interested in blogging after writing a two-part series on the topic for OJR:
Blogging as a form of journalism
Weblogs: A new source of news
And I’ve been a panelist on blogging at various conferences, such as this one at UC Berkeley and this one at South by Southwest. I’m also moderating a panel on bloggers at the University of Florida on April 1.
I started blogging just as the OJR series appeared, and never looked back.
What software do you use to create your blog?
I started with Userland’s Manilasites (courtesy of Dave Winer), moved up to Movable Type, and now use the ultra-sleek TypePad.
What software do you use to read blogs?
I use NetNewsWire Lite on my Apple Titanium Powerbook. And I use plain vanilla IE on my PC. I usually use my blog as the starting point, because it tells you which blogs have been updated in the past 12 hours.
What are your favorite blogs to read, and why? Which overlooked blogs deserve greater attention?
I enjoy the blogs of Doc Searls, Jay Rosen, Dan Gillmor, BoingBoing, David Weinberger, SmartMobs, Sheila Lennon, LA Observed, Howie Kurtz, Joi Ito, Christopher Locke — a fairly diverse bunch. But it really depends on what mood I’m in. I read all of the dozens of blogs listed on my main page.
Overlooked, deserving blogs? Start with John Battelle’s Searchblog, Tim Porter, Reason Hit & Run, Jenny Levine’s The Shifted Librarian and Greg Beato’s Soundbitten (though both are not too obscure), textually.org and picture phoning for the latest on camera phones, PVR blog, and tons of others. You’ll find the urls to them all on this page. When I find a new blog that I really like, I just add it to blogrolling.com.
How much time do you spend blogging?
I spend about two hours a day doing it. It’s probably too much time, but I find value in the connections, sources and level of authority that it brings.
Where are blogs going in the future? Are they a fad, or a revolution in how we share information?
Blogs are certainly no fad. Look for video blogging to hit big later this decade. It will certainly evolve, but the weblog form will be with us for a long while.
What’s so cool about being a blogger?
Being invited to conferences to speak, and meeting up with 25 other bloggers over dinner in San Francisco.
How do blogs fit into the “new media” puzzle?
Big question. I maintain a directory of what I’ve written on the topic here.
Are all blogs journalistic?
I wrote about 3,000 words on the topic for Nieman Reports:
Blogs and journalism need each other
Will blogging kill the “old media”?
Blogging won’t kill old media, and old media won’t kill blogs. The two media forms will form a symbiotic relationship. It’s already happening, with the intersection of journalism and blogging:
Do bloggers need editors?
If they’re blogging for a professional publication such as a magazine or newspaper, yes, but an editor with a light touch — I call it editing lite. I wrote about it here:
Should newspaper bloggers be subjected to the editing filter?
If they’re independent writers like me, then the blogosphere is my editor.
What sort of journalistic standards should a blogger apply to her writing?
The secret to good blogging is the same as the secret to good journalism: Tell the truth. Observe carefully. Report accurately. Muse at your own risk.
How important is it for bloggers to read other blogs and news sources? Does it help to be a news junkie?
If you blog and you don’t read other blogs or news sources, you’re not really blogging, you’re navel gazing. A healthy curiosity for what’s going on in the world, and a willingness to share informed opinions — both your own and others’ — are among the ingredients of a good blog.
What does it feel like to have one’s ass fact-checked?
Exhilarating, sobering, and reassuring all at the same time. I’d rather be fact-checked and corrected than to have a mistake attached to my name floating in cyberspace for eternity.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Well done. Nice post. Thank you for representing the rest of us bloggers so well. It is people like you who give blogging a good name.