In the recent weekend edition of the Globe and Mail, columnist Christie Blatchford had a few nasty things to say about blogs and the people who write them (subscription required*). I'd like to quote directly from her article, but it seems that I've forgotten that section at the restaurant I was at this morning. Her main point was that bloggers, like many writers, are in need of an editor. I certainly agree with this, especially because my own duties at BlogCampaigning involve editing posts by Jens and Espen, and I know that my own posts would certainly benefit from some editorial advice (if you've got any, give it freely in the comments). However, I feel that she was unnecessarily harsh and dismissive of blogs and their contents. After telling us that not everyone is cut out to be a writer (placing herself on a pedestal), she says that someone taking up blogging is akin to her taking up surgery or engineering without any training.
This is where I disagree. Blogging is the training. Learning to write publicly is part of the process of becoming a writer. The end result is that some blogs are written by people whose talents far exceed those of anyone working at the Globe and Mail. Had Christie done a few minutes worth of research, she would have quickly discovered one.
-Parker
*On a side note, I'm pretty pissed of that I can't view the full article on the Globe and Mail site. I paid for a copy of the paper, so why can't I also view the same content, at essentially no cost to the Globe and Mail, freely online? Jens pointed me to the website http://whybugme.com that sometimes works for getting around things like this.