Slow or Fast, blogging is real work and so is community building

“Do You Ever Do Any Real Work? That’s a question I used to get all of the time in the early days of this blog. I don’t get it so much anymore. Because slowly but surely people are wising up to the fact that blogging is work and it’s a very valuable use of my time… the time and energy I’ve put into this blog for the past five years has built a unique and very sophisticated audience. You are connectors and hubs of influence.”

So, even with the NYTimes noting a move toward “slow blogging” I agree with Max Kalehoff and the guy he interviewed above (Fred Wilson) that whether you are a marketer, a journalist, a teacher, or a student, connections are key. And blogging is going to remain one of the key ways to connect with “hubs of influence.”

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BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » No bullshit here Lots of this is just “he said” but “I really said,” and interesting to journalism insiders. But toward the end of his funny self-defense, Jarvis hits on something that should be a discussion and then an assignment in Journalism classes everywhere. Is the old-style one-on-one interview a dead-end narrative form? Sure, if you are trapped in a waiting room that has no Wi-Fi or cell connectivity, you might pick up a magazine and read an interview as JJ describes. It represents, not objectivity, no matter what the earnest reporter may say. It is a narrative that is valuable only in its selectivity, because otherwise it would be a transcript or unedited recording. If we aren’t trapped off the grid, who wouldn’t read an interview, and check Wikipedia, google someone mentioned in the article, look up a word or do a fact-check, while reading a story online? We need to be pushing our students to explore contextualized, interactive, multi-layered narratives. Reporters need to move their own words off the stage a bit, and allow the interviewees words, blog posts, and all the other tweets, jotts, and status updates, that make up one’s online persona to share the stage through links and other interactive experiences. That’s what I think.