As long as I’m in the mood for making up new words, I hereby coin the term blogholing for stereotyping blog content based on one of the widely established categories of blogs: warblogs, techblogs, and so on. If you go to Google and plug in the search term of your choice, plus “+blog”, you’re probably going to find a blog on that topic. In trying to prove my point by finding and linking to some ham radio blogs, I found a fascinating essay by Tony Collen, “What is ham journalism?” In it, he says:
There’s something we bloggers have in common, regardless of whether we belong to the upper or lower castes (and cases) of Journalism. Or to both. We are all, each and every one of us, many things; but we are all writers. That’s what we do here. We write.
He goes on to liken blogging to ham radio: both are hobbies involving communication, and both represent opportunities to jump in, start conversations, and share information without having pre-established relationships. Sure, there are journalist bloggers like Dan Gillmor and ‘real’ author bloggers like Cory Doctorow, but most of us are just ordinary people (ranging from librarians to USAF mechanics to schoolteachers to, probably, garbagemen) writing about what interests us. Blogging is a pleasant cross between talking to a stranger at the airport or doctor’s office (since you can get trapped into receiving Too Much Information) and the ease of access and information content of Big Media.
I guess I’m halfway in between; I earn a living by writing, but it’s technical. On the other hand, my brother earns his living doing technical stuff, but he writes too. We can all do it. If you’re not blogging yourself, why not?
Update: Doc Searls has an explanation of what bloghole means.
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