What Is This Thing Called Blog?

by Peter Saint-Andre

2005-05-02

All sorts of folks are getting their shorts in a knot over what we should call bloggers. Are we journalists, writers, content providers, or something else? I think of myself primarily as a writer, but I remain unconvinced that the nomenclature is all that important -- although folks who worry about government regulation think it's best to call ourselves journalists (as Dave Winer said back in 2001, "journalism is a person writing a journal"). Why can't we just call it blogging and leave it at that? Heck, even to call myself a writer sounds a bit pretentious -- I'm just a person who writes -- and writing is just about as natural to me as breathing. As the sixties psychologists used to say, labeling is disabling. My philosophy is, just keep on writing. If everyone has a blog, how's anyone going to shut us down? Rights are meant to be exercised...


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