Blogging and journaling are not the same thing
Define blog:
A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order). Although most early weblogs were manually updated, tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging."
— Wikipedia
Recently over at Weblog Tools Collection there was an article called "Things You Should Avoid Blogging About." It was a good article offering advice on, as the title states, things that you should avoid blogging about. I could see, from the first time that I read it, that it offers very useful information to anyone who is new to blogging. Unfortunately, you can see from the comments on the article that a lot of people are not happy with it. Take, for example, this comment:
Last time I looked a blog was for the blog owner to write about anything they wanted to. Their cats, their dogs, their cheese sandwiches or lack thereof. As has been said by a couple of bloggers… if people don’t care for your content, they’ll go elsewhere. What we definitely do not need are bloggers telling other bloggers “what not to blog about…†or “XX things to avoid blogging about…â€
— Britgirl
At first glance it may seem like these commenters have a point…. who is anyone to tell others what they should and shouldn't blog about? Blogging is all about free speech, dude! But there is a big misunderstanding here. A lot of people seem to confuse blogging with something else I call "journaling," which might be due to the fact that blogging started out as journaling. For most people blogging is defined as anything that involves syndicated content on the web. I hate to be the one to categorize and pigeonhole everything, but we're going to have to narrow down this definition of blogging in order to get anywhere. I define blogging the way Wikipedia does; a web-based publication consisting of a series of articles. I think that blogging has the intention of attracting readers and building a subscriber base through structured and purposeful writing. Journaling, on the other hand, which is "write about your life and whatever you want" is entirely different. Obviously no one is going to tell you how to keep your journal (and chances are, no one is ever going to read your journal… ever). But when it comes to blogging, everyone wants to know how to improve their writing and attract more readers. That is why articles like this one and many others that you can find across the web are definitely useful. I do believe that blogging should be structured writing and should strive to follow some of the guidelines that writing for magazines and other dead trees would follow. If you are out there journaling and writing about all the uninteresting stuff that goes on in your life without any structure to your writing or any care about who's reading, please just have the courtesy to not be offended when someone else's definition of blogging differs from yours.
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Interesting post, however I cannot fully agree on this blogging/journaling thing because to me it seems as if people who write about blogging itself are the only ones who talk about distincting themselves from the rest of us and in the end their blogs are nothing more than a collection of copies from articles from others who just write on their blogs about writing on their blogs. So what is that?
Even the most boring newspaper, journal or magazine brings new things into life and all of them bring specials, so why not just write about one topic mainly, but bring other topics into discussion, too?
But if this all is about definition, then I don't care what my website is called in the end. In the end you cannot take blogs too serious anyway, so I stay on the fun-side and enjoy doing it! X-Mas-/New-Years-greetings to you!
I call that lousy blogging. But you are exactly right… you can't take blogs too seriously, that takes all the fun out of it! And happy New Year to you too.
I said this about your interesting topic:
We are no real journalists but we are conveners of interesting ideas.
I think a lot of bloggers are not just blogging about their personal life or business life. They are writing a mixture of personal opinions which could easily be confused with columns in newspapers or magazines — columns do not fall in the category of articles either. Montoya, are you a columnist or a blogger?
An interesting read on the weblog/web journal debate: http://www.diarist.net/guide/blogjournal.shtml
this is so funny to me because 4, 5 years ago when I was journaling online people would constantly ask me why I called it a journal or online diary! so I caved to peer pressure and just started calling it a blog by '03, LOL
I guess this makes my blog a journal?
I don't know - I think blogging is what one makes of it. If it's nothing more than creative output to help the author work through something, as it often seems to be for myself anyway, then at least there's that.
Tomayto, Tomahto.
Johan: That's a tough question, but I'm certain that I am a blogger. I don't think I have the discipline, in focus of my subject matter or dedication to a schedule, to consider myself a columnist. 'Round here, I blog.
J: Thanks, that was a great read.
Trula: Unbelievable. I can't see what's wrong with calling it a diary!
Phil: See, sometimes you journal and other times you blog. You really bring the gray matter into the discussion here… pun intended.
It's tomayto, anyway