The state of blogging
Staff writer Marta Hummel developed a piece for today's paper that examines the maturation of the blogging medium.
A number of local bloggers have taken great exception to the headline, as do I. But if you can get past that, you'll see the greater point of the story: an Internet phenomenon that has matured. Some bloggers have pared back their posts, others have given up completely and yet others are just now entering the blogosphere.
As Marta's editor, I can tell you how we developed the idea. Frankly, we had noticed in the last several weeks a dropoff in the rate of postings at some blogs. Some bloggers had gone completely missing. In talking to some local bloggers, Marta heard that the pull of home and office life was taking its toll on the time some were dedicating to blogging.
Remember, over the last 18 months you could not pick up a publication, change a channel or surf a site without coming across or hearing about blogging. If Internet trends move in waves, this clearly was one. The fact that that wave was now moderating -- typical of such Internet trends -- seemed interesting. Hence, today's story.
Comments (5)
To report abuse of the comment feature on this site, please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page.
The article never even cross into the massive world of MySpace, Face Book and who knows how many others. There are THOUSANDS of Greensboro users, far more than the local bloggers even can count.
Of course, the MySpace (and others) folks do call themselves bloggers; yet that is what they are doing. It's kind of a square/retangle discussion.
Posted on February 6, 2006 12:38 PM
No meat... As I said in the comments at Ed Cone's blog, the article had no meat, nothing to chew on, as if the writer really didn't want to do the story. As Don mentioned above, our numbers have swelled, we've almost 90 members in our local meetup group representing less than half the adult bloggers I know of. If your readers would like the full story on Blogsboro bloggers then they just need read the history at Blogsboro.com.
Posted on February 8, 2006 6:30 AM
"Frankly, we had noticed in the last several weeks a dropoff in the rate of postings at some blogs."
That the largest regional paper bothers to notice is noteworthy in itself.
BTW:If neither the reporter nor her editor came up with the headline, who did?
Posted on February 8, 2006 3:18 PM
Copy editors typically write headlines, although our reporters or editors are asked to suggest hedlines on the story. In this case, the headline came from the story, almost directly:
Sentence in the story: "But the unbridled exuberance with which this Internet evolution was embraced has settled down considerably."
Hedline: "Bloggers' exuberance declines considerably"
Posted on February 9, 2006 12:23 PM
So Marta wrote the headline. Thanks for clearing that up.
Posted on February 9, 2006 10:16 PM