I’m not a Blogger, nor a Journalist – what am I?

Posted on 15. Aug, 2009 by vincenthofmann in Blog, Tech, featured

With my Sabbath Vol IV vinyl spinning, and a Heineken in hand I was feeling particularly philosophical. My mind crossed the metaphysical rail tracks and went on over to the other side; the exciting world of taxonomic systems. The way in which we as humans like to classify what we do with signs with apparently universally meaning, at least at the time we use them we assume them as such. My mind, which rarely allows me to escape self-reflexive thought (odd right?), zoned in on the term ‘blog’ and the phrase ‘to blog’. It was as if I’d visited the terms for the first time, and it was at this moment that the phrase ‘blogging’, a phrase I casually place in a conversation like one might force drinks into a groups chatter, was all wrong and all of that which I offered was unwelcome… My discovery, I don’t blog.

I have never blogged. To have blogged would mean that I’ve waxed lyrical about my day to day activities, after all it is a biographical log, and I am meant to charitably steer it like a captain might his log of events – I have not done this. Perhaps this is not is not a dilemma, it is however mine and I shall now extol the virtues of questioning the questionable art form. Having started an online journal of sorts, Moral Fibre, in which I have always encouraged others to write about whatever they like, I’ve oft referred to what our writers do as blogging. Blogging with a difference, is perhaps a little more like it, but others have referred to me as a blogger, and our motley crew of writers as bloggers too – the name like a nickname conferred upon you by your peers has stuck. We apparently blog here at Moral Fibre. To which I say;

Fuck off get a new name!

Am I over-thinking this issue? Should I care that others refer to our opinion pieces, carefully constructed and when I have time edited, as “blogs”. Many of you reading this are no doubt wondering what flavour of tik I’m imbibing, or where I got my pot stilled Meths from, but I assure you this is a real issue, one which will come to define the content publication space online in future and which peskily taps me on the shoulder, demanding attention like the geeky kid at a party might, almost daily.

When The Newyorker’s columnists opine online, are they bloggers? I’d argue, no! Writers, and here I refer to individuals who re-read their copy before it is published, or failing that reject copy which is benign and stale , because they fear that their public will find better things to do than read their thoughts, are not obsessed with self-referential pieces which coagulate online like a congealed mass of plasma. Instead writers use the online medium as a means to accessing a greater audience, and as such more ears for their thoughts. The content distribution channel does not alter the vocation, it is merely a different medium upon which to air one’s thoughts.

So what do writers who write for the online world, do?

Online writers are most certainly not journalists. In order to be classified as such, writers who write online would have to get out a little more, and we can’t have that, now can we? Online writers aren’t bloggers either, as I’ve made very clear online writers, and those of us here on Moral Fibre who write for you and tend to your unrelenting needs, simply cannot stomach it – we’re not the snowflake types. So if online writers, produce content but aren’t journalists, can we settle on just referring to ourselves as writers, who write online? Can we finally put to bed the notion that to write on this, a digital medium with the same language, grammatical and syntactical structure that applies offline, is just that, only writing and can we just fucking move on already because I’m sick to death of rehashing basic discourse theory to elaborate how content might be produced online and how such content is distributed. So let me, you and the rest of this grim online population put this question to bed, those of us who do not air their dirty laundry online, nor collect first hand accounts of the news as and when it happens simply write what we like, and write for you, our audience because in turn we hope you like what we like writing for you.

I leave you with a quote which illustrates my point far better than I could ever have hoped to.

But no language is perfect, no vocabulary is adequate to the wealth of the given universe, no pattern of words and sentences, however rich, however subtle, can do justice to the interconnected Gestalts with which experience presents us. Consequently the phenomenal forms of our name-conditioned universe are “by nature delusory and fallacious.” Wisdom comes only to those who have learned how to talk and read and write without taking language more seriously than it deserves. As the only begotten of civilization and even of our humanity, language must be taken very seriously. Seriously, too, as an instrument (when used with due caution) for thinking about the relationships between phenomena. But it must never be taken seriously when it is used, as in the old creedal religions and their modern political counterparts, as being in any way the equivalents of immediate experience or as being a source of true knowledge about the nature of things.

Aldous Huxley.

Tags: bloggers, blogging, columnists, discourse, language, lingusitics, the new yorker, writing

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12 Responses to “I’m not a Blogger, nor a Journalist – what am I?”

Paul Jacobson 18 August 2009 at 6:13 pm #

I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I am comfortable to call my blog, well, a “blog” and to describe what I do on it as “blogging”. It is a name for an activity, namely writing for an online weblog (weblog = blog, not “biographical log”).

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Vincent 18 August 2009 at 7:28 pm #

Hi Paul thanks for stopping by. I understand why you’d say you have no problem, it’s very much a personal grievance of my own and not any attempt to sway bloggers away from calling themselves that.

I must however disagree with your ning convention though, to blog or the activity of blogging is in my mind at least very much focused on the autobiographical – it would be like saying that to practice journalism is merely just writing about whatevers considered important – it isn’t it has a structural framework and set of “rules” governing it. The same could be said of professional columnists, they write as professionals and are measured by the requirements of such. So although you don’t mind blogging I dont think of you as such, I put you in the same limbo as most of the moral fibre writers caught between covering the news professionaly and being judged accordingly and being a part of the news…

Maybe we’re all gonzo journalists – and maybe this is our digital rolling stone!

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Vincent 18 August 2009 at 7:30 pm #

Bugger trying to respond via my phone, the errors above may reflect that – apologies to all who care about such

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ExMi 22 August 2009 at 5:00 pm #

“With my Sabbath Vol IV vinyl spinning, and a Heineken in hand I was feeling particularly philosophical.” <— sheesh, vince, you're all about keeping it real, aren't you? oh wait. is that windhoek?

fuck who cares. call a beer a heineken or a windhoek or a peroni it's still just that. a fucking beer.

blogger, writer, journalist – we're all the same. wordsmiths. the content might be different, the audiences might be different, but the basic principles are the same.

so dry your eyes and get used to the fact that you're….wait for it….a blogger. you might not be a life blogger, a mommy blogger or a legal blogger, but you do B.L.O.G.

Hate to be the one who breaks it to ya

and airing dirty laundry online? not the only form of blogging, just an angle i like to try every now and again.

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- vincenthofmann 22 August 2009 at 6:29 pm #
  
  The basic principles aren’t the same though.
  
  I’ll use a basic example, if we’re all wordsmiths why were you forced to read some theorists in jurisprudence and not Paul Jacobson on web-tech-law? A peer reviewed journal is not at all akin to that of an opinion piece posted online.
  
  The airing dirty laundry bit was my attempt at saying that the new era of bloggers are a little more complex than those who keep journals of themselves online for all to see. If however those individuals are lumped into the term “blogging” as much as I am, I don’t really want to be classified as such. I’m quite entitled to that opinion because I listen to Black Sabbath and drink beer which makes me infallible.
  
  Your dirty laundry does get a lot of people excited though – I’ve heard there’s this guy, Vince, who your fans use to meet you in the flesh…
vincenthofmann 22 August 2009 at 5:29 pm #

Fuck it seems like literally no one understood what I was getting at.

Ok here’s a simple analogy.

A writer, paid to write for the Sunday Times for instance, is paid to write at a particular standard and can be held accountable for writing shit. Unlike for instance if I go to Paul’s blog and slag him off for pulling copy from my blog without pasting for instance the comment which’d solve most of his issues. The point I cannot hold Paul accountable for what he writes on his blog, because to blog is to purge, to blog is to tell the world your story – be it an opinionated piece on blogging or otherwise.

SO let’s get a few things straight, which Paul will undoubtedly ignore.

I did not;
Slag off blogging.

You want me to slag off blogging? I might just do it because that’s my right, right?

I did not insult bloggers.

I did not say that blogging is the lesser art. It is no more or less important than writing for the Monocle Magazine. To the person who writes the piece that is – not so much for the poor editorial team who has to sell said content onto an audience.

I blog. There I said it. That’s why I said, rather ironically, that this is my personal dilemma.

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Eve Dmochowska 22 August 2009 at 5:38 pm #

Sorry, I don’t follow your logic here at all.

Who says blogging is equivalent to waxing lyrical about day to day activities? (well, who else other than you?)

Wikipedia says “A blog (a contraction of the term “weblog”) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). ”

You say “The content distribution channel does not alter the vocation, it is merely a different medium upon which to air one’s thoughts. ” Maybe. But until *you* are a paid New Yorker writer, who simply extends his means of expression to online, I think you should wear the title of blogger with pride.

A rose by any other name will smell as sweet.

You, Vince, are def a blogger.

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- vincenthofmann 22 August 2009 at 5:47 pm #
  
  But Eve I did say that, that’s why I said it is my dilemma. I guess I should make it clearer – this is Vincent’s blog you read, he is talking about blogging whilst blogging. It’s meant to provoke a reaction, it’s meant to challenge what you think, it’s also meant to end without a resolution because as I said “maybe I’m overthinking this”.
  
  I ended the piece with;
  
  So let me, you and the rest of this grim online population put this question to bed, those of us who do not air their dirty laundry online, nor collect first hand accounts of the news as and when it happens simply write what we like, and write for you, our audience because in turn we hope you like what we like writing for you.
  
  Isn’t this exactly what you’re all saying? That blogging, the label so many people who don’t extol the virtues of social media or write about nokia phones for fun, think of when they think “blog”? I make the statement which suggests we just write for fun – because we aren’t journos and we’re not just airing our dirty laundry.
  
  Sorry for seeming a little confused by the hype this piece is receiving. If you guys want to be really challenged by what I’ve written about blogging, then you’ll search moral fibre for the term “journalism” and you’ll find some really provocative pieces.
  
  I repeat, I did not knock people who write what they like…I knocked those who write about themselves incessantly. I’m a blogger, I’m allowed to say that
asher 22 August 2009 at 7:20 pm #

I must admit, the comments on this blog post are just as interesting as the blog post

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Paul Jacobson 23 August 2009 at 9:13 am #

Just pitching in quickly with a comment. I haven’t had time to read through everything and comment meaningfully on this terrific conversation my post sparked on this blog as well as mine.

My comment is that is this a perfect time to have this discussion. I have been reading a number of blog posts about a new trend, a return to blogs as the focal point of bloggers’ social networks and social profiles. I will engage more fully and respond to all the comments and feedback (well, maybe not all of them) as soon as I get a breather.

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- vincenthofmann 23 August 2009 at 9:53 am #
  
  God Paul you’re such a blogger
  
  This comment made me chuckle:
  
  “terrific conversation my post sparked on this blog as well as mine. ”
  
  Seems like I was the only one who commented on your post