Blogger as Documentarian
While blogging Scott McCloud’s recent MCAD lecture I quickly identified the crimes bloggers at the Democratice National Convention are accused of.
- Magical Mystery Tour Syndrom: In 1968, the Beatle’s thought it’d be great to tour northern England with a busload of circus sideshow freak and film everything that happened. Nothing did.. Proving that just because you trap a dynamically divese group of people in a confined area doesn’t mean the outcome is engaging. We’re relearning this 35 year-old lesson by unpurposefully putting bloggers at formal events and by putting Amish in the City.
- Voyeuristic Navel-Gazing: Weblogs, like rap lyrics, can very quickly slip into over-saturated, self-exploration, and ego stroking. With the popularity of reality shows, it’s easy to believe every ‘Dear Diary’ entry is going to be savored by the Internet public. It’s not (see number 1). We’re all too self-involved to care that much about some weblogger. Instead, webloggers need to think of themselves as the latest one-man mobile uplink - acting as the refreshing, insightful, highly-responsive voice in an otherwise hostile, overly-formalized, media world.
- Split Engagement: Think of an aggressive investigative reporter and a photo-documentarian. The reporter is fully-engaged continually digging for the best dirt. On the other hand, the photo-documentarian is one step removed from the action. They’re job is to capture - not make - the event. The act of event-blogging is more akin to photo-documentary work. In both cases - the author has a machine between them and the action. This multi-tasking prevents them from getting fully-engaged - thereby temporing the published story.
It’s tough to get 9 managers to green light a deep-dive into a controversial subject and I imagine that’s what it takes to do anything interesting at the big media conglomerates. Webloggers - individually or (even better) a rogue group - can attack a subject from multiple angles. Producing a sharper, more multi-dimensional view of an issue - for far less investment - than a red-coated reporter.
As bloggers, it’s time to take publishing cues from Nick Denton rather than Kevin Costner.
