Blogger’s Burden: Virginia Postrel Weighs Input and Output
I’m a fan of Virginia Postrel’s Dynamist blog. Postrel writes an economics column for the NY Times that is always informative. I recently commented on her blog thoughts and her column analyzing NAFTA’s “productivity spur” in Canada. Postrel has some very relevant thoughts on the difference between blog posts and crafted articles. Blogging involves a lot of shoot from the hip and lip. That has –obviously– an upside and a downside. Intellectual feedback , and for that matter, emotion-driven feedback, can be very valuable, and the Internet’s web provides the opportunity for near-instant response.
UPDATE: Thanks for the superb comment (#1) on “what Virginia Postrel forgot” about Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan’s retirement is the start point for her post. I didn’t mention that because what I found interesting was her discussion about the difference between blogging and producing a complete article (or essay, etc). Commenter Teresa suggests that blogging is/was Sullivan’s job — she points out he ran pledge drives to keep the site open. I do not know if keeping the site open meant paying for Sullivan’s time (perhaps a reader knows). I don’t believe that Sullivan has reneged on a pledge per se, but the commenter suggests he’s reneged on a pledge drive. No, blogging doesn’t pay any bills at the Bay house. As I mentioned in my very first post, Glenn Reynolds urged me in February 2003 to start a blog. He thought I would find it fun and a complement to my newspaper column. Glenn was right.
There is a difference between Andrew Sullivan and just about all other bloggers hitting the keyboards. A couple of years ago he actively turned his blog into a business tool. He started having “pledge drives” to support himself. His goal at the time was to be able to earn enough from the pledges so he could blog full time. In other words, he made the blog his day-job. (he even differs from Wonkette and some other bloggers who have corporations behind them) Now it seems, as Andrew has grown tired of blogging and is going on hiatus, everyone has forgotten that he had made the blog his job. They still think of it as something he did “on the side”. The fact that his blog content was freely available doesn’t change this. In actuality, what he is doing is quitting one job and moving on to another because he can’t find the time to work 2 jobs at once. There is no problem with this, people change jobs all the time. The problem is when people try to equate Andrew Sullivan and his blogging with other serious bloggers who do their blogging “on the side”. Eugene Volokh, Glenn Reynolds, Tim Blair to name some of the top names, have never considered their blogs to be their primary jobs. Even Glenn only blogs about what interests him (much to the dismay of those who simply refuse to understand how blogs work). So, I think Virginia’s piece is slightly off the mark because she doesn’t seem to know the entire story behind Sullivan’s blogging history. (or has possibly forgotten that bit of it)
Comment by Teresa — 2/2/2005 @ 1:19 pm