Tuesday, October 19, 2010

What's a blog post, anyway?

I forgot to announce that RSL is taking a scheduled, one-week break. I'm visiting the good people at ESADE at the moment (enjoying it very much!) and will take a few days off with my family when I get back. Regular posts, every other day, will start again Monday.

In the meantime, here's some easily digested food for thought. In Slate this week, Farhad Manjoo raises, but doesn't quite answer, a question that no doubt sometimes occurs to you as well. What is the difference between a blog post and an article? The difference is more marked in academia than in journalism, of course, but I think it's ultimately the same distinction: an article is subject to editorial review while a blog post is not. It is a blog post if the author makes the decision to publish. It is an article if an editor makes that decision. That's my view, anyway.

Back next week.

4 comments:

Presskorn said...

Perhaps of vague interest to RSL:

http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/advice-on-writing/

Incidentally, I don't like Levi Bryant's writing (in his Deleuze commentaries etc.), but I do sort of like one his maxims in this post: The more you write, the more you will write.

Thomas said...

I totally disagree with that post! I'll now have to write a response to it. Thanks for giving me the extra work, pal.

Jonathan said...

"Finally, I believe it is incredibly important to make ourselves uncomfortable if we wish to write. There’s a way in which scholarship, expertise with respect to a particular thinker or field, is the kiss of death for writing. We become so familiar with our area of expertise that the will to write dries up and disappears."

That's the part I disagree with most.

Mark said...

This is more vague with well-known authors, I think. Whether Zizek writes a blog post or an article hardly matters, apart from archival/citation purposes, because no editor is really going to convince him to change anything, and rarely will one reject his submissions. In fact sometimes his articles are verbatim republications of his blog posts, or excerpts from his books.