Super Bowl Update

I've spent the last couple of weeks immersed again in the world of publishing, on assignment for NPR. I was looking into the relationship between traditional and internet publishing. Out of those weeks came two stories, one that ran on Weekend Edition Sunday on what constitutes a magazine these days —here’s a link if you’re interested http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112384571— and one for WMRA that addressed the question: Does publishing on a blog constitute “real” publishing?

That story was inspired by a question Anna Marie Johnson asked in one of my essay-writing workshops. She wanted to know if she posted an essay on the workshop’s blog, could she still submit it to a magazine. Three years or so ago, I would have answered “no” with confidence. These days, I realized, I didn’t know. Hence, the WMRA story.

I got the following note in response to that from Sarah O’Conner who teaches Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication at JMU that I thought you might find interesting if the world of blogging is a new one for you.

Dear Martha, I enjoyed your piece on blogging but think a couple of distinctions would be useful for your listeners, i.e. publishing vs. self-publishing and refereed vs unrefereed publishing. Blogs are self-published if they have not been vetted by anyone, so a six-year-old can publish a blog about an overnight with a friend just as easily as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author can publish a blog. A blog can be written and published in a matter of minutes, but a book published by Random House goes through a number of readers, editors, and revisions, a process that can take months or even years. Blogging is a very populist, democratic activity, but in the end it is up to the reader to determine quality. The only vetting I know of is certain websites that list best blogs.

So, I’m curious, after the last two weeks mucking around in the world of internet publishing. What do you all think about blogging as a form of communication? Do you think it expands our individual universes or clutters them?

Also, any suggestions on topics you’d like to see discussed in this space are more than welcome!!!