Search This Blog

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Is it the Blog that Killed the Writer?


The New York Observer has yet another take on the decline and fall of the writer.  The article is written by Doree Shafrir, who used to blog for Gawker, but appears to have made her way to so-called "legit" journalism, a trend that everyone in the article says is unlikely!  Funny.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fascinating article. (The whole series is good). Lots of truth in it. Which means lots of sad stuff too: "People don’t really talk about specific writers anymore" hit me as true. Since the Web exploded, people read on their screens all day -- yet we haven't really had any writers people talk about just for their writing. The love of just sheer writing feels like an idea of the past -- as does the idea that there might be a short story that "everyone" has got to read. No one cares about that sort of thing.

I got started as a freelancer in the magazine world right at the edge of the change (10 years ago). They still pay well, but so do blogs -- and as a stay-at-home-freelancer I'm running more blogs these days instead of pitching magazine editors.

However, there ain't no fiction blogs out there. Imagine even getting a quarter a word for a story you put your all into, and it getting published in the blogosphere where thousands might read it the day it comes out? Wouldn't that be great, blogs end up saving the short story?

x said...

Your back on the blogroll, and on another post.

Anonymous said...

``To prove its interest, on March 11 Hearst held its first ever “print innovation expo” at its new skyscraper on Eighth Avenue. The printers and manufacturers there showed editors and publishers all sorts of new magazine covers, including “lenticular covers (holographic treatment that allows two images to interchange), gatefolds, pull-out sections, metallic printing and more,” e-mailed Nathan Christopher, a spokesman for Hearst.

The point, then, is to capitalize the physical experience of reading magazines. If it’s all about textual and textural experience, then the more dear that experience becomes, the more of a luxury object it becomes.''


Wow this is infuriating ... an incredible load of horsecrap. Please someone douse it with kerosene and light it up high.

Magazines playing games with their covers, tweedling around with metal paint and perfumes and "physical experiments" ... how about BUY SOME GREAT WRITING FOR A CHANGE AND FILL YOUR PAGES WITH IT, YOU DIMWITS! I mean listen to these idiots talk. They're the same idiots who canned all the long features and who don't buy fiction or poetry.

Anonymous said...

if i'm not mistaken lrod is getting like 1,000 unique visitors a day, and now this (above), blogger spam that hits only the top blogs. you must be getting a lot of eyeballs, wr. that's awesome but i wish ya luck. 'cause you're going to need it. with the kind of things you've been writing about the establishment probably wants your balls on a stick.