Not my newspaper column
Yesterday a friend asked me what I was writing about today. He was referring to my newspaper column. I said I didn't have a column this week.
"It's been a while since you've written one," he responded.
"Three weeks," I said.
"Not doing anything?" he asked.
"No, just nothing to say," I answered.
Of course, that's not true. I've posted more than a dozen entries here in that period. So why am I posting items big and small nearly every day, but don't have material for a newspaper column?
I have this idea that my column should be important or something that readers just must know. Both probably wrong-headed concepts.
The audiences for the column in the paper and the blog are different. Even though I invite newspaper readers to join us on the blog, I get more feedback on the column via e-mail, the USPS and telephone than in blog comments.
I'm more formal in the newspaper than the blog, too, a stylish tic I'd like to break myself from. But it is fed by the sense that many of you know me even though we've never met. Added to that is our ability to talk with each other here, to clarify, to argue and to poke fun at each other.
So, should I write an entire column about one reader's aversion to Jim Rosenberg's humor? Or Mark Binker's audio with Jim Black's lawyer? No. The one gives the complaint too much emphasis, I think. The other would be old news by the time the newspaper column arrives on Sunday.
I easily could have written a full column about coverage of Anna Nicole -- many public editors did -- or American Idol. Problem is, I doubt that I have a columnful of words worth reading on those topics.
"Write when you have something to say," I was told early on in my editing career. I've tried to follow that. If the only reason you're writing is to see your words in print, then you're wasting your readers' time.
Besides, one lesson I've learned over the past two years is that most of the value of writing a column or a blog lies in the interaction, not in the publication.
Comments (2)
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Personally, I prefer blogs that concentrate on "water cooler" topics. Stuff that has local interest and importance and on which there are differing opinions. What people are talking about "now" that has an impact on their lives here in GSO.
We can all sit in front of the TV and watch the Anna Nicole Smith train wreck or the war or who's gonna run for president. I prefer the blogs to be more local and personal.
Just my $.02.
Posted on February 18, 2007 11:57 AM
"The audiences for the column in the paper and the blog are different."
For darned sure. Their expectations are different, as well. Onliners expect daily updates or commentary, no matter how short, well-defined, or laid out. Print folks expect more wrap-up, methinks, as opposed to breaking news, even if it's Anna Nicole Smith. It's a function of printed papers usually being 24 hours behind and serving the "deeper" information need and factual summary rather than the questions that surround breaking events.
Ex: hubby gets his news from print. I get mine online. When something very current happens, he looks to me for a synopsis or framework. And I've stopped reading CNN, WaPo and NYTimes daily; instead, I read the blogs via RSS (carefully selected) so I know what's going on in GSO, Paris, and Baghdad.
Maybe you should put a print column of summaries of your online posts and jeez, get a better (easier) URL to point to your blog. It makes me giggle to read your print URLs. (idea: http://theeditorslog.com" or something similar)
Posted on February 18, 2007 1:17 PM