Metablog
This week's Entertainment Weekly is one of those holiday issues, by which I mean that half of the magazine's staff might have been on holiday when it was going to press. It's a fall movie preview full of articles that could have been written anytime in the last several months. They've been saving this stuff for a week when the office is half empty, and since it's a double issue it gives them a week of wiggle room. Must be nice in the MSM.
I tried a similar thing with my Indian dinner post. I jotted a few ideas and uploaded the photo on Friday and then fleshed them out and posted on Saturday night. But I felt a bit guilty about it and I don't know if I would do that again. It feels wrong to save a blog entry for a rainy day. Blogs document the moments of their creation in a way that even weekly magazines do not.
While self-reflecting, here's an analogy (since being nixed from the SAT, analogies need a home wherever they can find one): a blog entry is to an essay as a ringtone is to a song. Discuss.
I tried a similar thing with my Indian dinner post. I jotted a few ideas and uploaded the photo on Friday and then fleshed them out and posted on Saturday night. But I felt a bit guilty about it and I don't know if I would do that again. It feels wrong to save a blog entry for a rainy day. Blogs document the moments of their creation in a way that even weekly magazines do not.
While self-reflecting, here's an analogy (since being nixed from the SAT, analogies need a home wherever they can find one): a blog entry is to an essay as a ringtone is to a song. Discuss.
posted by mzn at 9:18 PM
2 Comments:
I would have let you get away with the Indian dinner post had you provided the recipe for cucumber raita.
I love analogies (though the ones on the SAT always seemed like they might have been written by crackheads).
I think your analogy works, mostly because both blog entries and ringtones can range from the derivative and sloppy to the polished and inspired, though -- on first glance -- tenchnophobes might find both blogs and ringtones utterly ridiculous, or at least -- perhaps because of their temporal / DIY nature -- less substantial or "legitimate." But I've read many blog entries that are way more interesting than your typical Harper's essay, and I've heard plenty of ringtones that are better than the typical top 40 drivel. Anyway, a ringtone HAS been a top 40 hit and it seems like the NYT has AT LEAST 2 articles a week devoted to the influence of blogs. Though their "production quality" or "consistency" may not be that of the MSM or that output of major labels, blogs are less predictable and (like other DIY precedents: broadsides and zines and punk, indie rock, and undergournd hip hop) have the potential to be much more radical than anything you'd find coming out of a "major" media outlet and -- to me at least -- that's pretty exciting.
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