At its best, blogging is an art. And just like any work of art, be it Nabokov’s Lolita or Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment, it can be subtle and expressive at once. A good blog post can stir up anger, elation, and grief. It appeals to everyone and can incite passionate discussion. Blogs can create trends or destroy them. Like art, a blog post has its roots in the banalities of everyday existence.
A good blogger can elevate the mundane, or debase the divine. A good blogger creates his own personal villains, orchestrates conflict, thus creating drama. A good blog post can be fiction, non-fiction, or somewhere in between, like a well-written op-ed piece, but written in less time and with less thought. No, that’s not a typo - less thinking is one of the things that sets blogging apart from any of the traditional media. The technology-enabled facility of quick publishing gives blog posts (and their responses) what can be loosely described as a stream of consciousness style. The immediacy creates a sense of intimacy with the audience, and motivates them to interact with the blogger.
This interactive aspect of a blog is what separates it from traditional writing. A blog post is incomplete without its comments - they are an integral part of it. Comments allow a blogger to clarify, argue, converse or just observe his audience. Unlike traditional works of art, comments enable a blogger to look inside his audience’s minds and digest and internalize what they are saying. This knowledge will, in turn, show up in the subsequent posts, where readers can comment again, and the cycle continues. This interaction makes blogging a largely synergistic activity and makes blogger and audience explicitly interdependent on one another. Of course, there is always interaction between artist and audience, but it is not nearly as intimate, and it is not incorporated into the artist’s work as quickly as with a blog.
By giving people the freedom to write about what they want, when they want, along with a more-or-less automatic readership, countless souls (including myself) have found their ‘inner writer’. Blogging is allowing people to create a new style of writing, with its own set of rules. As more and more people join the blogging bandwagon, it is increasingly difficult to ignore. As it gains more exposure, it is also difficult to ignore the fact that blogging, at its best, is indeed a unique art form.
Article comments
1 - Timothy McCorkell
I enjoyed reading your article, but I noticed that you mentioned that Andrew Sullivan is a top blogger. But is he a top blogger because he is affiliated with Time or is he just that good at blogging?
He does write well, but so do a lot of other bloggers, but very few are making what he makes. In fact, I once read that he is in the top for getting donations to his pay pal account from readers. Sometimes, I can't help but wonder if those donations are really a round about salary.
I'm only mentioning Andrew Sullivan, because he's more or less held out as an example to other bloggers, that they should strive to follow in his path. But is that path a bit more winding than anyone may imagine?
2 - The Great Ganesha
timothy: firstly, thanks. and just to clarify, i didn't say andrew sullivan is a top blogger, just that he is famous. i'm not quite sure why he's that well-known, and frankly, i don't visit his blog too often. his writings didn't catch my eye, but then again, i try and stray away from political writings (i leave that to the economist). as for his success and fame, well, i'm sure there are any number of theories to explain that. and as with any area of life - success does not always go to those who deserve it. best, gg.
3 - Howard Dratch
Excellent article for one positive on the position of blogging -- as an "art form". I am not sure I can go that far since I have yet to find a Nabokov or an Henri Cartier-Bresson in the blogosphere but I do believe they may well be there in the 55 million ( per Technocrati).
Now, are they "several things all at once and so defy categorization" and does your article pay homage to Eric Berlin's from a month ago about the need to focus a blog?
I do know that being away from computers, blogs and Blogcritics for 10 days or so has left a vacuum in some creative part of me and it is good to be back. Now I merely have to organize, focus and learn to write like Nabokov and shoot like Cartier-Bresson. Tall order. Good article.
4 - dick bonzo
time mag considers him a, "distinct and independent voice." he was already a writer published by them. and his blog The Daily Dish has a good name. Barrack Obama is noted as saying he reads The DAily Dish.
Writing is either art or its not. wether your criticism qualifies it means nothing.