August 28, 2012

Why Blog?, or Paying Homage to the Greats

Now that we have built a tiny and undedicated audience for this blog we have been asked this question at least twice, "Why on earth do you write that miserable little blog of yours?"

Here are the top three reasons that we maintain a blog.

  1. Self-importance: We have things to say, and it is eminently aggrandizing to spray them across the internet instead of ineffectually shouting at the TV/radio/computer/random strangers
  2. Self-delusion: people want to hear what we have to say, and are clamoring for more of our trite, lazy analysis of current events, public policy, and/or science!
  3. The real reason that we do this is we grew up in the age of newspaper consolidation and widespread syndication, which meant that we could read some really great writing and journalism even in our dinky hometown daily.  We particularly remember thinking for a time that syndicated columnist, Dave Barry had just about the best job we could imagine.  How fun it would be to goof around all week then write about it in a few column inches each week.  But at the time we also thought that it was nearly impossible for an average person like ourselves to become so widely read, and influential.  We imagined the years spent slogging it out in the newsroom to make it to the ranks of syndication, and we concluded that other pursuits were more attractive to us on a professional level.  Besides, we liked math and science better than literature and composition by the time we had to decide on a college major.  That was when we let our original dream of editorial fame dwindle.  Fast forward a few years, and thanks to disintermediation afforded by the internet anyone can be an amateur columnist.  So now that the barriers to entry are quite low, we daily feel the call to pick up the torch laid down by some of the past greats and tap out some thoughts that can be read by the wider public.  It's not to say that we count ourselves peers to the great and dedicated professional writers that we still enjoy reading, but we also value the ability for any citizen to put pen to paper bytes to text editor and scrawl out a some insight about the world we live in.  Professional journalists don't have a monopoly on great writing or good sense and you can find examples of insightful writing by amateurs all over this great and varied internet.
As we mentioned yesterday, go check out Dave Barry's columns on the RNC over at National Journal.  While you do so think about penning your own blog about what you see around you.  Our society will be stronger for it.

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