I read this article by Michael Gorman the other day; Library Journal – Revenge of the Blog People!, anyway It’s pretty annoying. The guy who appears to be someone high up in american library mawotsits (president-elect of the American Library Association) is basically condeming all blog authors to the world of terrible writers. Now I agreee there are some bad ones out there, and I also accept that my skills in this area may or may not be the best when compared to high paid journalists or authors, but then that’s kind of the point isn’t it.
We go to places we want to read, about things we want to read about. If we don’t like it, we won’t go back. So quality or lack of it, is something that will filter blogs out, because no one will read something they don’t want to read. A bit like newspapers and books. A lot depends on the bloggers target audience. I have no idea whom mine audience is; I just type it in as it comes out of my head and give little consideration for who’s reading it, but then that’s why I started doing this, to get and idea of what it is like to blog. And although I don’t really that this whole process serious, I do take umbrage and snotty nosed gits like Michael Gorman lumping all blog writers into the same hole.
It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote. Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs. In that case, their rejection of my view is quite understandable.