Stefan McDaniel blogs about how blogs have ruined language. (ht Joe Carter)
Reading Postman for the first time last month gave me clearer language to explain my rage against the rise of blogging. For what he says about media can be said about literary forms—they are biased toward certain kinds of content. The blogpost is biased toward speed, brevity, and cleverness. It thus hands the public square over to bullies, sophists, and clowns.
ummmm, the “Public Square” is everyone’s, including the bullies, sophists and clowns.
I write a blog in order to stay focused on actual news. It forces me to dig deeper into the news and arrive at my own conclusions. I spit those out here not to use words in some beautiful, meaningful way, but to keep track of what I think so that when in conversation I don’t end up sputtering and searching around tidbits of memory to share my thoughts.
I read blogs to find links to stories I otherwise would not have found (ACORN anyone?). I read blogs to see how other people interpret the same stories I’ve read.
Furthermore, even good blogging threatens to worsen our already bad relation with the written word. Several excellent bloggers have told me that they find it much harder than they once did either to follow sustained written arguments (especially when not tricked out with flashy rhetoric) or to make such arguments themselves; they have grown impatient with writing that does not meet bloggy criteria.
I would submit that those people he’s writing about above, are reading/writing blogs for different reasons than I have. Mr. McDaniel throws all the millions of bloggers into a box and I doubt even 1 million really fit in that particular box.
Agreed to pretty much all of the above. Also, have you noticed that your blog becomes a memory aid? I use mine all the time to search for what I thought at the time about a particular piece of news – and just to remember that that piece of news occurred.
It definitely becomes a memory aid!! AND it helps in the interpretations of the news.
This follows that which followed that other thing. It’s often assumed we’ll forget the first thing and I would, except for the blog.
(and I’m not even very good at that compared to others!)