The Deadline Is Always Now
Andrew Sullivan writes for The Atlantic Online on how blogging for journalists has evolved.
Anyone who has blogged his thoughts for an extended time will recognize this world. We bloggers have scant opportunity to collect our thoughts, to wait until events have settled and a clear pattern emerges. We blog now—as news reaches us, as facts emerge. This is partly true for all journalism, which is, as its etymology suggests, daily writing, always subject to subsequent revision. And a good columnist will adjust position and judgment and even political loyalty over time, depending on events. But a blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing—and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater.
No columnist or reporter or novelist will have his minute shifts or constant small contradictions exposed as mercilessly as a blogger’s are. A columnist can ignore or duck a subject less noticeably than a blogger committing thoughts to pixels several times a day. A reporter can wait—must wait—until every source has confirmed. A novelist can spend months or years before committing words to the world. For bloggers, the deadline is always now.
The entire read is a good one and I suggest it whole heartedly. The one thing he says in the excerpt that caught my eye is about the deadline being now.
And that’s what’s breaking the back of traditional news media. Online is instant.
And people who read blogs or news sites on line, they want news as it’s happening.
It’s quite a thing to behold. But Sullivan also says this is a golden age for journalism. And it is.
News, as I’ve said before, is news regardless of if it is on the printed page or the computer screen.
The deadline is always now.
I fully agree, and I think the trap for many bloggers, including myself, is perfectionism. A post does not have to be lengthy or perfect (and certainly not both) to matter.
We missed you yesterday at BCN. Hope all is well.
Missed you as well. We were involved with a benefit and couldn’t make it but we will be there next year.
Pondering Podcamp.
i’ve never considered myself some type of “typical blogger” and i can’t fully agree with what Sullivan says. there are indeed “hourly” bloggers and daily ones. but usually a thought or series of thoughts on a topic i might write about usually has to kind of get some pondering time in my brain.
i might read and research for some length of time before i even begin to write. however, some stories/posts absolutely get an immediate posting — that video i saw about monkey waiters in that restaurant the other day — or maybe info on a breaking news story, or just a report that is hard for me to believe actually made it into print.
perhaps that’s why my blog doesn’t have bajillions of readers. i tend to avoid reading a whole lot of blogs just because it seems more a home of knee-jerkism than good or provocative writing. also, a lot of my own life is kinda boring, so i don’t write much about me, though i admit that is a tendency i am attempting to address.
writing a blog or book or script is indeed risky and often incredibly rewarding, but usually for it’s own sake. i often admire how quickly you can pen a fine post and i find that after my several years of blog-writing, i still feel very much a novice.
i’ve often read Sullivan, and still just can’t quite decide if i like his work or not. but without a doubt, he is right that blogging moves in nanoseconds of time.
I guess what I got out of it (by the way, I only read Sullivan occasionally because he tend to be too one note for me) was the comparison to blogging, online news and the transitions that some traditional newspapers are doing to offering news quickly.
Others aren’t.
I think the things that we are going to be watching in the next couple of years are where the consumers of news are headed. I still think that’s undecided.
Oh, you are no novice. You are amazing. Here’s one crazy thing I must tell you. This morning on Twitter I called Alec Baldwin “Adam” due to a stupid typo. I instantly heard about it.
What that tells me is, in one respect, that instant communication is going to have issues. But clarifications are also instant.
I’m wondering, as I pontificate after reading your comment, what my role in these transitions will be.
I’m worried and excited at the same time.
remember “video killed the radio star”?
it didn’t
and the internet will not kill newspapers either. yes, blogging, especially live blogging, is faster than fast, but it will be a very long time, generations, at the least, before the morning paper and coffee will be replaced by a tiny screen worn on a pair of eyeglasses or implanted in your cornea.
by the way, no matter what technology does to alter the business of bringing the news to the public, i have no doubt that you, ‘coma, will be just peachy. the future is wide-open and waiting. be excited.
save worry for the darn economy.