Arieanna notes that the speed of blogging affects the quality of writing – but she’s not sure how big a problem that poses:
The act of blogging does require that we write fast. There is far too much out there to write about, to share, to just get done. I have a few hundred posts to read this weekend, and about 20 tabs open right now. Can I really take an hour to carefully craft each commentary? I don’t think so. For some, yes. Some take my research. Some ideas take time to form. But those posts come out “feeling” different. More crafted.
…[D]o we do a disservice to the conversation by our rush to get the post up? By not doing offline research, talking to people, getting the facts and figures right? Or, in some cases, by writing in scattered posts. Posts that do not link together the overall picture of our ideas.
…[H]ow much are we willing to transgress on the creation and storage of ideas in the favour of quickly disseminating those ideas in easy, quick to read parcels?
Coincidentally, the New York Times’ Public Editor column today addresses a parallel in the mainstream media: the quest for the scoop.
Wanting to be first, to beat the competition, to compel other media to say “as reported yesterday in The New York Times” puts the paper in a position where it can build staff spirit, expand its reputation and win prestigious journalism prizes. And be manipulated like Silly Putty, too.
The writer, Daniel Okrent, argues that journalists and editors are often seduced into ethical grey areas, making questionable deals with sources to beat the competition to the punch. In the case he addresses, the Times got a sneak peak at a report clearing university professors of anti-Semitism in exchange for not getting any other comment.
(Okrent adds, “The first tip-off [that an unsavory deal has been struck between reporter and source], of course, is a string of words like ‘to be announced tomorrow,’ ‘obtained by The Times and scheduled for release today,’ or any other permutation that suggests this is in The Times, just The Times, and you won’t see it anywhere else for at least a day. Then, if the only people quoted in the article are those who benefit from spreading its substance, be wary. And be angry, too. You deserve better journalism than that.”)
“You can get it done fast, cheap or right. Pick any two,” the saying goes. In blogging — and increasingly in the margin-squeezed media world — cheap is a given. But does fast have to be?
It goes beyond accuracy and coherence. To Arieanna’s list of the casualities of the breakneck pace of blogging, let me add reflection. Too many blog posts are composed and fired off in the heat of the moment; when they deal with controversial issues, civil discussions quickly become difficult. That’s not the only reason the political blogosphere is such a polarized, hostile environment — it’s not like political discourse these days is the stuff of calm, sweet reason — but it sure isn’t helping.
And for what it’s worth, I thought about this post for a day before writing it.
Great insight here. I like the tie-in with politics. That is something I shy away from blogging about for many of the above reasons. The issues seem too large, to difficult to do justice to by fast blogging. And yet, does this stifle commentary? I subscribe to a number of “political” or “social” blogs… but I find that they are not ones I read often.
Am I interested? Indeed. But the posts are written in a dissertative way: long, convoluted, blocky. By tackling large issues, we are forced to write more. We can work on language for accessibility, but politics is not something that can be parcelled out easily into small chunks. By having large, deep posts, we do indeed sacrifice the size of the conversation to those few willing to a) read it and b) understand it. I just wonder where the balance is.