Let me make another analogy. A newspaper column is a homily. A blog post is a conversation. As I see it the blog post that isn’t a reaction to an event in the news, a newspaper column, an op-ed, or another blog post is a rarity.
Jazz isn’t Armstrong or Davis or Parker standing on a stage playing notes written on a page, virtuosic as they were. Jazz is the conversation between Armstrong, Davis, and Parker and the other musicians with whom they were playing. Even with musicians who were far away.
I think that’s right. Indeed, I tend to write posts with certain readers and/or bloggers in mind and to assume some reasonable familiarity with what I’ve written on the subject. A column generally has to be a stand-alone and self-contained.
The jazz analogy is a good one. As an avid blog reader these are my criteria for a really great one.
-well written, analytical take on on current news (political, economic, random things of interest) with good links
-slightly to the right of my own point of view to challenge my thinking (most of my favorite bloggers are center left and lack diversity and interactivity in their comments, so I keep looking)
– good comment threads (diverse, interactive, not too long, witty a big plus)
OTB best meets these criteria and has one of the few comment threads I read.
Blogging is more free-form, certainly, and less constrained by convention. A column is 800 words. A blog post is as long as a piece of string.
Let me make another analogy. A newspaper column is a homily. A blog post is a conversation. As I see it the blog post that isn’t a reaction to an event in the news, a newspaper column, an op-ed, or another blog post is a rarity.
Jazz isn’t Armstrong or Davis or Parker standing on a stage playing notes written on a page, virtuosic as they were. Jazz is the conversation between Armstrong, Davis, and Parker and the other musicians with whom they were playing. Even with musicians who were far away.
I think that’s right. Indeed, I tend to write posts with certain readers and/or bloggers in mind and to assume some reasonable familiarity with what I’ve written on the subject. A column generally has to be a stand-alone and self-contained.
The jazz analogy is a good one. As an avid blog reader these are my criteria for a really great one.
-well written, analytical take on on current news (political, economic, random things of interest) with good links
-slightly to the right of my own point of view to challenge my thinking (most of my favorite bloggers are center left and lack diversity and interactivity in their comments, so I keep looking)
– good comment threads (diverse, interactive, not too long, witty a big plus)
OTB best meets these criteria and has one of the few comment threads I read.