Talk of the Nation on Blogging
On Monday, the National Public Radio program Talk of the Nation discussed blogging with Lev Grossman, who wrote the article for Time magazine Meet Joe Blog, Dan Gillmor of The San Jose Mercury News, who was at BloggerCon, Steve Rubel of the blog Micro Persuasion, and Ana Marie Cox of wonkette.com.
Another blogger and the first caller complain that the definition of blogs they use is too narrow.
Grossman says a strong voice, in his opinion, is what makes a blog good. He summarizes his Time article.
Rubel talks about his experiment getting news from blogs for a week and how he doesn’t think they’re completely effective news sources.
Gillmor describes blogging as “feeding a beast that is ravenous all the time” when he responds to a blog reader who mentions his blog reading pattern and how he waits for certain blogs to updates and knows when some will. “Well, there’s never a lack of things to say. The problem that I’ve run into is just saying ‘Okay, I’ve done enough and it’s a really nice day. How about going outside where the real world is?’” Gillmor addresses the "difficulty" of finding things to blog.
Cox talks about what it’s like to blog for a living and her routine to gather material for her blog. She also praises the Democratic National Convention for opening up their doors to bloggers.
One thread through all the guests is whether bloggers have some kind of responsibility to make sure that what they’re posting is accurate. Are they accountable for incorrect information?
At the end of the Time article mentioned above, there’s a sidebar about how to find blogs.
