Andrew Sullivan’s “Why I Blog”

Ichimame, an 19-yea...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic, a writer I admire, has written an ode to blogging that I like very much. Considering the fact that I’ve suffered from my first real bout of writer’s block over the past few days (thanks to a two-day trip to Rochester, NY, my work on a presentation about Web 2.0 technology, picking up a writing award in Manhattan, and a visit from my two college kids), reading Sullivan again has put me back on the right track.
Blogging is a solitary pursuit, and for me a pursuit that doesn’t pay the bills and attracts only a small (though loyal) audience. So occasionally, I run dry. But posting to my blog is constantly a thought that nags at me, reminds me that I’m still a writer. I might be getting older, I might be on a damned diet again, I might be finding excuses to avoid the gym, but my brain is still working. I want to learn, read and write.
Here’s what Sullivan says about blogging:

You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference: a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, of course, just as correspondence could be—but usually posthumously, or as a way to compile facts for a more considered autobiographical rendering. But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one. It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before.

And when I’m feeling that this is so solitary a pursuit, I’ll try to remember how Sullivan describes the immediacy and companionship provided to a blogger by his readers, commenters and dissenters.

On my blog, my readers and I experienced 9/11 together, in real time. I can look back and see not just how I responded to the event, but how I responded to it at 3:47 that afternoon. And at 9:46 that night. There is a vividness to this immediacy that cannot be rivaled by print. The same goes for the 2000 recount, the Iraq War, the revelations of Abu Ghraib, the death of John Paul II, or any of the other history-making events of the past decade. There is simply no way to write about them in real time without revealing a huge amount about yourself. And the intimate bond this creates with readers is unlike the bond that the The Times, say, develops with its readers through the same events. Alone in front of a computer, at any moment, are two people: a blogger and a reader. The proximity is palpable, the moment human—whatever authority a blogger has is derived not from the institution he works for but from the humanness he conveys. This is writing with emotion not just under but always breaking through the surface. It renders a writer and a reader not just connected but linked in a visceral, personal way. The only term that really describes this is friendship. And it is a relatively new thing to write for thousands and thousands of friends.

The next time I run dry, I’ll return here for water.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]




Creativity by Sir Ken Robinson

You will enjoy this 20-minute talk by Sir Ken Robinson at the TED Conference in 2007. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started in 1984 as a conference that brings together people from those three worlds. Since then it has become larger and broader.

The annual TED conference brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. The TED website makes the best talks and performances from the conferences available to the public for free. More than 200 talks from the TED archive are currently available. Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources. He’s worked with governments in Europe and Asia, international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and national and state education systems, and cultural organizations that include the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sir Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, and UNESCO. He also was Professor of Arts Education at the University of Warwick, one of the five leading research universities in the UK, for 12 years.

In this video, a must-see for every parent and teacher, Robinson makes a profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity. Enjoy it and share it with colleagues, principals, teachers, and parents you know.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Care2 — The Power of Petition

I received an email today from the producers of [Title of Show], a Broadway show I recently went to see that was terribly clever, funny and unique. The email announced that the show is scheduled to close in October, way too premature as far as I’m concerned, and asking me to sign a petition on behalf of the show to get them more exposure. Specifically, the producers hope to get a performance from the show on the “Ellen” show sometime in the near future, and thereby stave off the retreat of investors and the show’s demise.

I clicked on the link, which took me to Care2, a petition site that hosts petitions of all sorts, giving you a chance to sign, write a sentiment and press a big “sign” button to get the whole thing out there. Of course, you also get a chance to email your friends and ask them to pass it on.

After signing the petition on behalf of my Broadway pals, I started to roam around Care2 to look for more causes and petitions. What I found there was both educational and moving.

Care2 lists and features petitions and causes of all kinds, from the about-to-close Broadway show to hunger and poverty worldwide. Among the causes are human rights, poverty, women’s rights, political issues, children, and more.

How about a petition to urging Congress to protect the Arctic Refuge, now threatened by President Bush’s budget proposal, which calls for drilling to resume in the refuge in 2010?  Cool. The Arctic Refuge is the most important denning habitat for this country’s vanishing polar bears.

Oxfam America is there with a number of petitions, one of which asks the U.S. Senate to co-sponsor the Extractive Industries Transparency Disclosure Act, which would require the public disclosure of payments made between oil, gas and mining companies, and their host governments.

The William J. Clinton Foundation is also there, among its causes a pilot subsidy program in Tanzania, to combat the high rate of deaths there from malaria.
Care2 has its own petition, with more than 17,000 signatures, urging the UN Security County and countries neighboring Zimbabwe to put an end to the bloodshed in that country, in which more than 200,000 people have been displaced, 86 opposition supporters killed, 10,000 people injured, and 500 women and girls sexually abused or raped.

Teachers and students should jump on this bandwagon, which incidentally currently has more than 9 million members and more than 29 signatures on petitions. You can join Care2, participate in discussions, find friends, and learn about the world around you, the power of the written word and the Web.

How awesome is that?

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Objections to Social Media at Your Job? Walk This Way…

Gannett Co., Inc.Image via Wikipedia

Although I’m just getting to this post at ReadWriteWeb, I think it’s so important to read it. Writer Marshall Kirkpatrick lists Ten Common Objections to Social Media Adoption and How You Can Respond. I hear these objections a lot — from colleagues still getting to know this stuff, from superintendents who don’t want to blog because of the reactions they might elicit, from adult students who say they just don’t have the time. But Kirkpatrick says that anyone using this media now should be ready to meet these recalcitrant objections with a handy list of responses. For example, when they groan that “our clients don’t use this stuff/it’s too geeky,” let them know nicely that:

Many of these tools provide value vastly disproportionate to the literal number of people they reach. These are like high-value focus groups where you’ll gather information and preparation to engage with the rest of the world.

Editor and Publisher also featured a story earlier this year that looked at how newspapers need to seriously consider making cultural changes, including more use of social media and the web. (I just heard recently from a handful former newspaper colleagues who’ve suddenly found themselves out of a job, and I’m personally losing money on my Gannett stock.)

For me, as a public relations professional with work in the public education sector, I find myself always urging people to get on board this online media train. I hope they begin to robustly use the tools the web offers them to communicate and to promote their fine schools.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Land of the Open and Free? We’ll See…

I have been a fan of the openness of Web 2.0 — we’re listening to music, watching movies and TV shows, replaying Michael Phelps Olympics videos over and over again. All for free and open to anyone willing to put in the time and energy to click a few times. Everything I’ve read tells me it’s the open source decade, when licenses and copyrights will be a thing of the past. But the former journalist in me is skeptical.

This week, I wrote for another site about the Web 2.0 phenomenon of free books and free magazines online. The old-timer in this area is Project Gutenberg, with its 25,000 free books in its online book catalog. Also out there is the catalog of 30,000 books at the Online Books Page maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, Google Books, and Bibliomania, which has thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays online, along with message boards about books and authors and lots of reference materials.

Keep in mind that all these forward-thinking sites are prohibited by copyright law from reproducing any books published after 1923, so they all contain classics. But there’s Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and a slew of other recognizable (albeit classic) authors whose works have outlived the copyright laws.

An even more controversial newcomer to the Web 2.0 world is Mygazines, a site that encourages its members to upload their copies of Life, Time, Playboy and many more magazines as PDFs, which are then converted into easily readable “flip book” versions of magazines that anyone can read for free online. This, of course, has sent the publishing world into a tailspin over copyright laws and I’ve read that attorneys are working overtime to shut the place down. But so far, it’s still out there, as you can see from my screenshot. I personally (former journalist that I am) love it.

For those of you who prefer to live within the confines of the law, Zinio offers a long-overdue service. By obviously partnering with the magazine industry, Zinio offers single-issue purchases of magazines online, providing you with immediate access to the issue you wanted to read and saving on paper by letting you read the entire thing online. Awesome. The corner newsstand on your laptop.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Global Voices — One More Reason to Love the Web

Global Voices proves Thomas Friedman’s premise that the world, indeed, is flat. If you’d like to feel like you’re in Beijing, or Georgia, or New York, read Global Voices, which bills itself as “a non-profit global citizens’ media project” which was founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.

With tens of millions of people blogging all over the planet, how do you avoid being overwhelmed by the information overload? How do you figure out who are the most influential or respected and credible bloggers or podcasters in any given country, especially those outside your own? Our international team of volunteer authors, regional blogger-editors and translators are your guides to the global blogosphere.

The result is a fascinating collection of blog posts from everywhere, providing you with more than just a sound-bite understanding of the cultural, political and societal issues facing individuals living in far-flung places around the world. While these posts highlight our differences, they also shine a lens on what we all have in common.

Check out Global Voices at your first opportunity, and use it as a learning tool.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Help a Reporter — If He Helps You First

OK, so Peter Shankman is a handsome New Yorker with a pretty interesting blog. He writes a lot about keeping in shape, so that’s cool.

But wait — Shankman has a website, helpareporter.com. Not helpareportergethisfactsstraight.com, not helpareporterwriteasentence.com, not helpareporterwithgrammar.com, and not helpareporterfindajob.com. Now there’s an idea.

No, Shankman’s site permits PR folks (and the general public, I guess) to sign up as potential “sources” reporters can query. If you sign up, you get daily emails from Shankman, who does you the big favor of sending reporter queries your way, in case you can provide sources, names, phone numbers, ideas. I guess Shankman’s playing the buff middle man between the Great Fourth Estate and the unwashed masses of PR people. His website also warns us (because God knows we’re so out of control) not to spam reporters with unrelated, baseless attempts to get our “clients” some air time or two inches in the Business section.

Here’s my question — where’s helpaPRperson.com? I dunno, but it seems to me (I “represent” public school districts in New York) that PR people need a lot more help than journalists. I’m always wondering what’s happened to the press and where they’re all hiding. I’m always searching for a warm body with the least bit of interest in education stories. As a former journalist, I know a decent story idea when I see one or pitch one. But there’s never a reporter in sight, at least not in my neck of the woods. What’s a PR person to do? Start a blog? An ENewsletter? Use the Web to manage his own message? Now there’s an idea.

BTW — if you want to helpaPRperson, you know where to find me.

Related articles by Zemanta
Zemanta Pixie