We begin, as we must, with the proto-bloggers -- the people who blog, therefore they are. Blogging really does seem to have begun as a strange from of self-expression, the diary gone (semi)public.
Begin with a few of the less famous (and in many cases) local examples. This woman seems to have two blogs, with sometimes identical posts. I think Nutmeg Grater is better known, but this second one seems more like a prototypical blog. Also check out of one last year's class bloggers. Dig back to see what he was doing in previous months. Here's a local blogging icon with a distinct writing voice. She is experimenting with video now, but, again, dig back. And Sally became a class favorite last year. You have to check her out as she began her blog and then in the days when she fled Katrina. Note the comments from Trinitites.
OK, that's the first half of class. Now, what happens when the early proto-bloggers get a little famious? You get Jason Kottke. and the very-related Megnut who seems to have parked her personal musings over here. Probably because things got a little complicated. Dooce is one of the few very personal blogs to have acquired a big following. Lastly, visit Rebecca Blood, for her own blog and her "Bloggers on Blogging" interviews, which include one with Kottke.
1 comment:
"You're taking a grad class on WHAT?!"
Colin mentioned that no one has yet posted anything, so let me be the first...be prepared for a fun class. The veterans of last year's class, of which I'm one, found that we made this funky intimate connection that none of us expected. To be honest, I had never read a blog until we started and I felt very uncomfortable with the whole idea of it at first. My initial entries were very stilted and "I can't believe I have to do this" in tone. It made me uneasy to have my unknown classmates -- not to mention the rest of cyberspace -- passing judgment on my thoughts.
What we found, though, is once we started doing it -- blogging, that is -- most of us loosened up pretty quickly. The blogging aesthetic tends involve this informal, train-of-thought self-revealing style that sucks you into this "we're all friends here" kind of discourse. Which is why it turned out to be such a great class. You should peruse the blogs from last year's class and the way they evolved (like you don't have enough to do).
As for the Nonsense Now blog Colin points you to, I agree that Brett has a great blogging voice and has consistently maintained his blog, which is a ton of work. He gets really personal and deep on a lot of topics BUT he never blogs about his new girlfriend (oops, did I spill the beans?). I also talk about my kids and myself, but never my husband. Somehow, there are lines of privacy we seem draw in the blogs which don't really make that much sense from an objective point of view -- why is talking about your friends ok, but about your girlfriend NOT ok? I can't articulate why exactly -- but maybe you guys will figure that out.
Also, one tip: when making your blogger entries, save it as a draft first before you publish. I've lost what I'm sure were my best entries (at least it felt that way) when I tried to publish directly and the system went down in the middle.
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