One Shot Blogs Don’t Make the Grade

The bloggers who have worked their fingers to the bone to get here
and understandably miffed that with the current cachet surrounding Blogging
everybody and his buddy has a blog up and running. At the Blogger;s Bunch
this morning we heard from one Senate candidate from Illinois who proudly
proclaimed :"I have a Blog now" but didn’t;t know the address and couldn’t
understand why we all sniggered when, upon being asked how much of the
blogging he actually did, declared "I guaranteed I’m at least reading
everything we;re putting up."

A few minutes later we heard from legendary AP writer and columnist
Walter Mears, who also, coincidentally, just started a blog.  He
couldn’t remember the address either, but noted it is available from
the AP web page.  This was the fourth or fifth time we have heard
from mainstream reporters that they have recently established blogs,
at the
behest of their employers, for the express purpose of blogging the convention
and campaign.

Three has been a minor epistemological argument going on among bloggers
as to whether these blogs really are blogs, whether there is room even
under the "Big Tent" theory of blog variety for these disposable, single
purpose blogs.  The consensus seems to be "No" and we tend to agree,
but not for the usual reasons.

Not because they are getting paid for blogging do their sites not qualify.
The employment status of the blogger is not what makes a blog.  Neither
is it the reverse chronological nature of the postings or the unedited
voice of a single writer. We have concluded that either form nor function
define what makes a blog a blog, since every time anyone proposes a limiting
definition, someone else points to a site which is outside the proposed
limitations and is yet clearly a blog.

Blogging is not any of these things.  Blogging is an attitude,
and these flash in the pan, media created blogs don’t get that, and so
they don’t got it.