Why I Blog...?

Andrew Sullivan delves into the topic of blogging in his article “Why I Blog”. If I had to create a one-word summary of the article it would be freedom. Sullivan talks a lot about how on a blog you can write what you want to write and not have to go through the lengthy editing process of professional writers for a newspaper/magazine or a book. With a blog you are free to write how you want, when you want, and what you want. Sullivan also talks about how ‘in the moment’ blogging is. The minute something happens in the world someone will immediately write about it on his/her blog. If you only read newspapers you are reading about what happened yesterday but on a blog you are reading about what is happening at that specific time. Sullivan describes this well: “There is a vividness to this immediacy that cannot be rivalled by print”. Another idea that Sullivan talks about that I believe is one of the reasons why he blogs is the amount of links and other ideas that are created from one blog post. People will comment on your post with their thoughts or they will write on their own blog and link to your post further opening the audience of your original post. The amount of information that will evolve from one blog post is infinite. Sullivan also links this to how a journalist looks at other sources before they write about it but “a blogger splashes gamely into a subject and dares the sources to come to him”.

And I really like this quote about the freedom of writing a blog from the article so I am adding it at the end: “To blog is therefore to let go of your writing in a way, to hold it at arm’s length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while, and to let others pivot you toward relative truth”.