Blog away

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeNick Carr points to an article by Andrew Sullivan that sheds some very interesting insights into blogging, points that are even more important for scientific writing and journalism

Some of the key points made

Quoting Matt Drudge, Sullivan writes

… the key to understanding a blog is to realize that it’s a broadcast, not a publication. If it stops moving, it dies. If it stops paddling, it sinks.

If you are serious about blogging, either as a writer, or just a casual blogger, you have to continuously be on top of your game, constantly being aware of what’s going on, of responding to comments or what others write. It’s not easy.

Yes blogs are superficial, but in their superficiality they have power

But the superficiality masked considerable depth—greater depth, from one perspective, than the traditional media could offer. The reason was a single technological innovation: the hyperlink. An old-school columnist can write 800 brilliant words analyzing or commenting on, say, a new think-tank report or scientific survey. But in reading it on paper, you have to take the columnist’s presentation of the material on faith, or be convinced by a brief quotation (which can always be misleading out of context). Online, a hyperlink to the original source transforms the experience. Yes, a few sentences of bloggy spin may not be as satisfying as a full column, but the ability to read the primary material instantly—in as careful or shallow a fashion as you choose—can add much greater context than anything on paper. Even a blogger’s chosen pull quote, unlike a columnist’s, can be effortlessly checked against the original. Now this innovation, pre-dating blogs but popularized by them, is increasingly central to mainstream journalism.

I think all of us have bemoaned the lack of depth in mainstream scientific coverage, in the shallowness of press releases. One of the roles we can play/should play is bringing reality to the science many of us love and breathe. To highlight the beauty and power of what we do and its fragility. To explain the potential of scientific discoveries, yet keep them real and not make them sound like a silver bullet to solve all ills (or conversely, the next coming of Skynet).

The next paragraph says it best, although Sullivan seems to forget that women blog too

A blog, therefore, bobs on the surface of the ocean but has its anchorage in waters deeper than those print media is technologically able to exploit. It disempowers the writer to that extent, of course. The blogger can get away with less and afford fewer pretensions of authority. He is—more than any writer of the past—a node among other nodes, connected but unfinished without the links and the comments and the track-backs that make the blogosphere, at its best, a conversation, rather than a production.

To some extent it doesn’t matter if you blog or not, but there is a power to talking about things you care about, which are highlighted very well above.

I will end with one more snippet

Not all of it is mere information. Much of it is also opinion and scholarship, a knowledge base that exceeds the research department of any newspaper. A good blog is your own private Wikipedia. Indeed, the most pleasant surprise of blogging has been the number of people working in law or government or academia or rearing kids at home who have real literary talent and real knowledge, and who had no outlet—until now.

We are all scientists in one way or another, some just happen to have more formal education and training that others, but we all have a voice and we can all teach each other. I should rephrase that, we can all learn from each other. A blog is just one superficial, yet very powerful, medium that allows us to do just that.