When is a Blog Not a Blog...
Is the Plain Dealer political blog really a Blog??
I just got back from Washington D.C. and checked in on the Cleveland.com site. If you start a blog and do not allow comments is that really a blog? Are they afraid that it will damage their ego if some jerk calls the "almost-bloggers" a jerk? I do not understand why some of the notes are not covered as stories in the real paper? Do they not have enough sources to be considered legitimate journalism? There are all these different voices covering politics in the almost-blog, but there are only a couple of stories in the actual Plain Dealer about politics. What are the rest of these guys doing at the paper? Are some of these almost-bloggers janitors or mechanics at the paper? I like the insight, but I do not understand any of it. There is no explanation of the standards used for these "almost-blogs."
Brian
I just got back from Washington D.C. and checked in on the Cleveland.com site. If you start a blog and do not allow comments is that really a blog? Are they afraid that it will damage their ego if some jerk calls the "almost-bloggers" a jerk? I do not understand why some of the notes are not covered as stories in the real paper? Do they not have enough sources to be considered legitimate journalism? There are all these different voices covering politics in the almost-blog, but there are only a couple of stories in the actual Plain Dealer about politics. What are the rest of these guys doing at the paper? Are some of these almost-bloggers janitors or mechanics at the paper? I like the insight, but I do not understand any of it. There is no explanation of the standards used for these "almost-blogs."
Brian
posted by Homeless Grapevine at 9:59 PM
3 Comments:
I have comments, and I think others should, but comments do not make a blog a blog. They make a blog more interactive, and -- I think -- more sucessful and more worthwhile.
Comments are an important addition to, not a definition of, blogs.
I was just asking the question is it really a blog if you cut off comment?
I think it is such a new enterprise, I am not sure that the definition is fixed yet.
Brian
The definition of weblog and the derivitive term "blog" cannot possibly hope to hold its meaning if it includes a specific set of rules regarding comments. The whole point is that it is wide open enough for anyone to make it whatever they want.
We have no clue how these things will evolve. I'd like to think we can, through weblogging and email, progress to the point where people write as well to each other on an everyday basis as people did before the invention of the telephone.
Read any civil war era letters to see what I mean. Those folks expressed themselves extremely well.
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