Festival of the Blog

By Courtney Lowery, 9-26-05

I wasn't expecting the crowd we got at our panel on blogging this weekend at the Montana Festival of the Book. I was waiting for the hipsters to roll in, but it seemed more women my grandmother's age were interested in blogging. I was heartened at such an audience. The members were full of interesting and insightful questions and comments and were fully engaged in the discussion. Similarly, we couldn't have asked for a more diverse and intelligent panel to lead the conversation: Patia Stephens, Ed Kemmick and John Clayton (oh... and me).

Blogging often receives a predictable reaction among folks who have only scratched the surface of the genre, or are confused about what it really is. People often think of bloggers as only self-indulgent navel gazers, political operatives or tech geeks. But I think the panel succeeded in highlighting that there are a wide range of blogging styles out there. And that each serves a unique purpose and has its own inherent value in the way we as a society communicate.

John comes at blogging from the perspective of an author, trying to keep tabs on the writing community as well as raise his own profile and promote his own work, all while practicing, practicing, practicing.

Ed represents the reporter who also blogs and manages to do both extremely well. A lot of newspaper reporters come off as dry and boring in their blogs (often forced upon them by newspaper editors who are convinced that the paper needs to catch up with this blogging thing, but have no idea what it's all about) because they are scared to reveal any biases or just because they've been taught for too long that they are human fact machines. As Ed put it, for too long readers have had no idea that humans actually write the newspaper.

Patia represents a blogger who started blogging because she wanted an alternative form of expression, a sounding board and a place to connect with friends and now, the larger community of blogging. What she's found is that often, that intensely personal perspective reaches out and resonates with a lot more people than you might think.

More on this later, but I chatted with Gov. Brian Schweitzer briefly this morning about the blogosphere and what kind of power and possibility it holds. He's an avid reader of blogs and had a few thoughts to offer that speak directly to a few of the questions we dissected at the panel:

"I need my news early and often," he said on why he reads so many blogs (he checks at least a dozen throughout the day).

"I think there will be a day where substantially less news comes from a dead tree than comes from digital. I can't wait to get my news by 6 o'clock in the morning from a newspaper. My news has to be there at 2 o'clock in the afternoon when it's made ..."

One topic we didn't have a chance to get into at the panel was one raised just at the end of our time: What do blogs have to offer the political arena?

It's often said that political blogging is the worst echo chamber of all blogging genres and I tend to agree. I have a myriad of ideas on how we can avoid the "parrot sphere" of people shouting at each other online (thus failing to elevate the discussion), but it does boil down to one thing for me: I believe that the increased spotlight the blogs have put on politics (which can come off as boring and esoteric in traditional media) is a good thing. Personally, one of the things I love about blogging is that it gives me a chance (and the challenge) of making public policy conversational, real and engaging. It's not that I couldn't do that in print, it's just that blogging has birthed a new style of covering these things and that has opened the door for journalists like me to put frankly, let 'er rip and make wonky stuff cool again.

One good example of how blogging can effect our political engagement is one Ed brought up: The Downing Street memo that broke (largely because of the blogosphere) this last May about the White House's plans for Iraq. The other good example is one from Schweitzer that I'll leave you with:

He says no one has given his energy policy (specifically his plan for coal-to-liquid campaign) more scrutiny than the blogosphere, something he's says he appreciates.

"They have dissected it, they have cut and sliced and diced it in blogosphere in a much more encompassing way than they have in the conventional press," he said. "I'm passionate about energy and I'm passionate about renewable energy and clean energy and in the world of blogosphere, people are passionate and they'll comment on issues and they'll kick all sides of it ... and that is what the blogosphere does."

We're only scraping the surface here on what blogging is, what it does, what the pitfalls are and what its future holds but one thing is for sure: Blogging is going to change the way we communicate, the way we find community and the way we gather disseminate and consume information. And because of the possibilities inherent in all of those, it excites the hell out of me. [End of article]