Did the invention of the piano make the first piano players — the ones who started on harpsichords — better musicians? Probably. Long before blogs, I thought Philip Weiss was the best columnist in America. His weekly or biweekly pieces in the New York Observer were usually original, well-observed, and deeply-felt. He now tells how blogging made him a even better writer.
I had smart readers, whose comments were often better than my posts, and I felt more accountability to them than I had to my print readers. The flippancies and profanities I used to go in for began to vanish. The Internet is not the Wild West, it is more like a great ballroom. Yes, it permits disguise and anonymity, but it is, in the end, a social space in which one’s words have consequences. I felt a sense of responsibility when I finished an item and had my finger poised over the enter key. I stopped posting pictures of my dogs.
Why blogs are better written in general.