Wither Blogging

I've been contemplating the blog of late. As my sabbatical draws to a close and I prepare (eagerly!) to return to campus, the classroom, and the routine of a structured life, I've been reading some things about new media, "Web 2.0," the future of journalism, and blogs. I have more questions than answers.

The blog phenomenon has become personalized. Early on, some super-star bloggers gained large numbers of readers: Drudge, Huffington, etc. But now that blogging has gone mainstream, and anybody and everybody can have a blog, most bloggers have only a few readers, and those are largely family and close friends. Some blogs, such as this one, appear to have no audience at all!

So of what utility is the blog?

Certainly there is the instrospective "diary" aspect. Writing helps to organize thought and allows for personal reflection in ways that few other human activities allow. But if one is writing solely for oneself, a word processor fills the bill. Why write in a public space that is accessible to others -- even if the others are small in number?

The "Christmas letter" aspect of blogging is attractive. Given that only those who are interested in one's personal life will be reading, the blog allows those few to access updates on the daily life of a friend or loved one regularly. Some may use Twitter or an SNS such as Facebook for this purpose, with the blog supplementing for longer posts. This is particularly attractive for those who are engaged in something of special interest. For example, I've encouraged students who are on study abroad or other extended travel experiences to blog. This not only saves having to write the same thing in dozens of emails, but provides a lasting record for their own use after they return. The travel blog is the ideal combination of diary and Christmas letter functions.

Some of those I've read (Clay Shirky, most recently) have suggested blogs as "conversations" with other bloggers within a small circle of those with similar interests. I don't have a very good mental picture yet of how this might work, but I think it's worth exploring. A community of persons who read one another's blogs offers opportunities for some ongoing wrestling with ideas of common concern. Granted, a listserv or wiki might fulfill this function as well or better, but the blog community has the potential, at least, to be more open and inviting to those on the periphery.

My friend, Lynn Clark at Denver U. recently facebooked a link to a piece by Australian journalism instructor, Julie Posetti, which suggested the blog as an educational tool. I experimented with a class blog in Intro to Mass Media several years ago, and it didn't get off the ground. Our campus Moodle server (affectionately named "Katie" for reasons that will be obscur outside of Lutheran circles) offers a blogging function limited to those registered for a particular course. The tools are there, I just have to figure out how to employ them.

It seems to me that, even as we near two decades of the web, that we are still, to a large extent, in the place that faced the whole of the internet in the '80s and '90s, television in the '40s, radio in the '20s -- we have a tool, but nobody is quite sure how to use it. Some in the business and commercial world have learned to turn a buck with these new technologies. Educationally, however, I'm not sure we have.