November 19, 2007 10:30
Trading the tyranny of editors for the tyranny of readers
There's really nothing people like reading more than blog posts about panel discussions where journalists sit around talking about blogging. (Seriously: I got some major uptake the last time I wrote one.)
Anyway, I was on a panel Saturday afternoon in some kind of outbuilding of Jay Gould's old mansion in Tarrytown, NY. The event was a "Magazine Editors & Writers Symposium" put on by the Hudson Valley Writers' Center and instigated by my friend Jeff Gordinier. I missed the first discussion, titled "Can creative nonfiction save the world?" The world still exists, so I think the answer must have been yes. I did catch panels on how to turn magazine articles into books (takeaway: be lucky and write a good proposal) and how to sell articles to magazines (takeaway: stop sending magazine editors so many e-mails or pretty soon one of them is going to snap and kill you). My favorite anecdote came from Douglas Rushkoff, who said that in 1992 Bantam cancelled his contract for Cyberia because the bigwigs there were convinced that by 1993, when it was slated to come out, the Internet was going to be totally over. (And yeah, it probably was over in 1993. It just made a comeback.)
My panel was on "Technology: The world of writing on blogs and for e-zines." Because, you know, blogging is all about technology. And what did we (moderator Gordinier, Michelle Kung of the Huffington Post, Troy Patterson of Slate, Jason Boog of several places, and I) impart? Mainly that writing for the Web can allow one to escape from the tyranny of editors and agents, but usually replaces it with the tyranny of readers (in the form of traffic counts) and other Web writers.
I'm all for varying the tyrannies to which I am subjected. I also think the Web's rules of engagement are more transparent, and often make more sense, than those of the publishing world. A woman in the audience said it sounded from our discussion as if Web writing was all about entertaining readers, while she saw her role in writing for print publications as informing them. Maybe there's something to that, but I think one of the great failings of most American newspapers (magazines have their own, different failings) is that they do so little to engage their readers. What's wrong with a little entertainment?
About The Curious Capitalist
Justin Fox is TIME's business and economics columnist. This is his blog. About the Authors
Barbara Kiviat just celebrated her 5-year anniversary covering business and economics for TIME magazine. About the Authors
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Reader Comments (5)
I'm astonished you think there's anything to the woman's comment at all: I'd put it exactly the other way around. A magazine article is carefully and laboriously edited to make it fit into the book as a whole and, basically, be packaged entertainment. A blog entry, by contrast, can be as recondite as you like, packed full of information, without all the throat-clearing and ground-setting and human-interest angles needed in a magazine setting. I never expect my readers to read *all* of my blog entries: they pick the ones they're interested in, and read those. And I pack vastly more information into my blog, about all manner of subjects, than I ever could into a magazine article.
Posted by Felix | November 19, 2007 11:21 PM
Dammit, I forgot I couldn't say a$$ here (as in, we're not tyrants, we're just a pain in the a$$), and now my comment is in Time-blog moderation hell :(
Posted by p_lukasiak | November 19, 2007 11:41 PM
"I pack vastly more information into my blog, about all manner of subjects, than I ever could into a magazine article."
Well maybe that's just because you're a better blogger than I am, Felix. :-{) (New emoticon taught to me by mustache man Aaron Perlut.) But yeah, I guess her comment was nonsense. I'm just usually too nice to say things like that unless goaded.
As for p_lukasiak: Congratulations on the clever use of monetary symbols. However, the Curious Capitalist is planning to abandon the dollar soon and move to a weighted basket of currencies, so such subterfuge will not be possible in the future.
Posted by Justin Fox | November 20, 2007 10:53 AM
Or maybe it's because you're a better magazine article writer than I am?
It depends on the blog, of course, and it depends on the magazine. I once wrote an 11,000-word article for Euromoney on buy-side attempts to increase their negotiating leverage in sovereign debt restructurings; I doubt that any blog entry would ever go into that level of detail.
But I don't think the woman in the audience writes for Euromoney.
Posted by Felix | November 20, 2007 11:15 AM
Thanks for the link, Justin. It was great meeting you on Saturday.
You have touched on the toughest part of blogging--how to come up with the perfect balance of entertainment and insight that a good blog requires.
While my headline-writing and one-liner writing muscles have improved while writing my practical blog, I still struggle to be witty every every post.
I suffer the tyranny of clowns.
Posted by Jason Boog | November 20, 2007 1:32 PM