Monday, December 31, 2001
How many bloggers can dance on the head of a link?
I said some stuff earlier today about Andrew Sullivan's blog not being a "real" blog, and now Mike is asking why.
I like Andrew Sullivan. I consider him a blogger. But I consider AndrewSullivan.com more of a site than a blog, even though it's Powered by Blogger. Here's why:
No permalinks, or at least none that work. His current Daily Dish has an entry date/time at the bottom, but it's not linkable. Once it's replaced, it scrolls to oblivion. Daily Dish Archives consist of one wedge of time, now a year old.He does logrolling, not blogrolling. The current Daily Dish (one of my favorite online columns, by the way) contains links to nothing but mainstream print sources: Time, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Independent (U.K.) and National Review. He may give weblogs his "best innovations" award (along with iPods and Segways), but he doesn't reward many (or any, currently) with reciprocal links. I think that's because he doesn't read them. Or if he does, he finds nothing useful or informative among them.Most of his remaining outbound links are to his own articles in various publications, including AndrewSullivan.com.He publishes letters, which is nice, but the difference between these and letters to editors on nonblog sites is approximately zero.I'll forgive him for not mounting a blogrolling list (they are a bit typical, no?), but not for leaving out any kind of a link list.
In his current Dish, Andrew says he's doing a "redesign" of the site. I look forward to it. Meanwhile what he has is a personal Web web site that happens to use Blogger.
As for my remark about AndrewSullivan.com and Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit both being "thick with voices on the Right," nothing snide was intended. Like Mike I'm politically independent. I sometimes call myself a "lily-livered Libertarian," because I believe in minimal government dedicated to maximum public good. But that wasn't my point (if I even had one).
But let's make one anyway: At both political extremes punditry gives way to pulpitry. On the Left it's better-than-thou. On the right it's smarter-than-thou (and tougher-than-thou). Both tend to suffer from what a friend of mine many years ago called "only having dial-out phones." They love to talk, but not to listen. They can make terrific columnists, but not-so-terrific bloggers.
I think Instapundit is a much better blog than Andrew Sullivan's. I also think that Andrew Sullivan's blog is a much better collection of essays and columns than is Instapundit. Both make enjoyable reading.
I'm with Tom:
Good writers, good minds, good exchanges, yes. But art? Journalism? More likely, a means of sharing views in a world where it is often inconvenient to frequent the same drawing rooms.
What I like about blogging is that it isn't Journalism, even though it is quite literally journalism. I have plenty of other work I'm paid to take seriously. So even if I'm serious when I write stuff here, I can't waste time being serious about it.
And with that I wish ya'll a happy new year. Chill, everybody.
Link in
Here: go to the Windows page at Micosoft, then hit your back button.
It won't work, because Microsoft doesn't want you to leave.
What's that called? Mouse-trapping or something? Don't you hate that? It's so ... small.
Deconstruction
Nice pushback (or push[choose your preposition]) from Joel on the software-as-construction metaphor. John Robb also gives his (final?) wrap on the open source thing, while BuriningBird kinda does the same thing, I think. Henso (a German site) adds a single word in English: Amen.
Danke, everybody. I'm going to bed.
Read out the old year
The latest JOHO and EGR have appeared within hours of each other. Good stuff in both, as usual.
A Joe Friday moment
The FBI shakes down J.D.'s mom in Jersey.
Irony award: Andrew's blog isn't a blog
BEST INNOVATIONS: iPods, weblogs, segways.
He also goes into the Blog Thing a bit. Mike Sanders points to the particulars. He also points to Instapundit and that blog's 'rolling list, which is thick (as is Andrew Sullivan's) with voices on the Right.
Relatively few of these, however, are real blogs, which (I submit) allow you to link to a current or past entry. Most of them are Web postings of printed columns or Web sites that have some bloglike qualities, but are mostly collections of essays.
The ones that are real blogs, like Tim Blair's, feel much more inviting to me. Take this piece, for example.
Stuff like that may not make me turn to blogs for Authoritative News, but it does make me spend less time paying attention to the news and opinion spigots of the world.