I had an email exchange about the difference between a columnist and a blogger with Teresa Schmedding.
Teresa is Assistant Managing Editor-Content Systems for the Daily Herald in the Chicago area and president of the American Copy Editors Society. She sent me the following email (used here with her consent):
I’m having a conversation in my head about blogs v. columns.We’re getting ready to revamp our article page templates, pull our old blogs into our current CMS, which gives me an opportunity to re-train the staff on the purpose of a blog v. a column or an article. And, as I’m thinking about it, I’m thinking there really shouldn’t be much of a difference between a column and a blog. I started mapping out elements of a blog and here’s what I came up with:
Key elements of blogs:
- Immediate access to readers
- Highly interactive
- No set deadline or publishing schedule
- No fixed length
- Relies on comments
- More casual in tone
- Continuous conversation
Then, when I started mapping out elements of a column, it was pretty much the same. Seems to me that as time has passed, that the gap between the two has narrowed since we’re all pushing interaction as a key element.Writers should interact with readers on all online elements. It should all be immediate and involve continuous conversation. Only difference is a more formal tone or lack of opinion in an article.What do you think?
My email reply to her was the rough draft of this reply in the blog:
Good questions. As a blogger who has done columns, I recognize the similarities, but I see definite differences. I have read lots of columns that run online, but they aren’t necessarily blogs.
I will send this link to some good columnists, bloggers and columnist/bloggers I know, inviting their responses (and if I don’t email you asking for a response, consider this your invitation.
Let me start by saying that I think a columnist today should be a blogger, who produces an occasional column from the blog. That makes it sound as though the two are interchangeable. But I still think a column is different from a blog.
Both should have a voice and a personality and generally a topic or niche (sports blog or sport columnist, advice columnist, mommy blogger, etc.).
While I have never been a full-time newspaper columnist, I have written columns for five different newspapers as an editor or reporter. Blogging has also never been my full-time job, though I have four different blogs now (in addition to this blog, I blog about baseball on Hated Yankees, share the travel blog 2 Roads Diverged with my wife, Mimi Johnson, and write the Gathering String blog promoting Mimi’s novel). I also was a regular contributor to the TBD Community blog and have written guest posts for a half-dozen or so blogs. My first blog, Training Tracks, focused on journalism training issues, first for the No Train, No Gain website and later for the American Press Institute. Mimi has also been a columnist for half a dozen newspapers and blogs occasionally.
Teresa noted that columns and blogs are moving closer together. I hope that’s true, especially with columnists who blog, and especially if that means columnists are becoming more like bloggers. The digital presence of a columnist should be a blog, not just columns posted on a website.
I won’t pretend that I regularly study enough columns and blogs to have much expertise on how close they are moving, but I welcome some columnists and bloggers to weigh in on that issue. If this means that columnists are thinking and working digital-first, I applaud the movement. If it means that blogs are becoming more like columns, I lament that they are not taking full advantage of the range of digital tools, techniques and opportunities.
When I started blogging in 2004 as a former columnist, I pretty much wrote columns and called them a blog. But as I blogged more, I started understanding the differences.
Let’s take Teresa’s seven elements of a blog and discuss what matches and how well (recognizing that I might be comparing more to a traditional column than to the evolving column Teresa described):
- Immediate access to readers. Yes, this is clearly a similarity and an important one. For the best columns, the relationship with readers is what makes them most special. The relationship with readers may be the greatest strength of a good column. I know that some blogs achieve a strong relationship with readers, but I doubt many people open their computers in the morning, planning to turn to their favorite blogger first, the way that newspaper readers might turn first to a great columnist. If I’m right about this, I think that reflects the vastness of the content available and the sporadic times that blogs appear. I am an early riser and post often in the morning, but I might post in the afternoon and I don’t post every morning. I think people find my blog through Twitter, Facebook, RSS and occasional visits, rather than looking for me in the paper every Sunday and Wednesday.
- Highly interactive. Yes, the best columnists are interactive, but I have seen many that are not. Because the column is print-focused, even when it runs online, its interaction is more feedback than conversation. A blog can be immediately interactive with polls, comments, links and other elements that allow the user to add content or personalize the experience.
- No set deadline or publishing schedule. This is a huge difference in my view. A column runs two or three times a week. A blogger writes when he or she has something to say. Many full-time bloggers post daily or even multiple times a day.
- No fixed length. Another notable difference. My columns in Cedar Rapids needed to be 700 words. (Here’s one.) Some columnists occasionally pull a few shorter items into a single column (often for a Saturday column). But length is so central to the column that the name is rooted in length. A blog is as long or as short as it should be. This post was way longer than any column I ever wrote and this one was way shorter.
- Relies on comments. The blogger has (or should have) a conversation with commenters in the comments. Many columnists use reader comments (probably more from letters and email than web comments) as column fodder, rather than joining the conversation.
- More casual in tone. Certainly both tend to be casual. If there is a difference between a blog and a column in tone, that’s probably less than the differences among individual bloggers or columnists.
- Continuous conversation. As I said on comments, I think the conversation is more robust in the blog.
Another big difference I see is how widely formats can vary on a blog. Columns are words. But blogs can be photos or videos. They can be a mix (my blog post Tuesday had photos interspersed throughout. Yesterday’s Gathering String post was a photo). Charles Apple’s blog for ACES wouldn’t work as a column; the images are essential to the format. A blog provides links for depth, context and attribution. A blog can be a list. So can a column, but you see more variety in approach and format in a blog. The variety in columns (which is extensive and amazing) tends to be by writing style and voice, rather than format.
To me, the best approach for a columnist today is to be a blogger who occasionally turns some of the blog into print columns. I think if you browse my blog from December 2008 to June 2009 (archives are by month on the right rail), when I stopped the column, you’ll see some posts that are just my column. I can see the difference. I suspect you can, too. You won’t see one every week. Sometimes I wrote a blog post during the week and then decided later that it would be the column. Those won’t be labeled on the blog. Other times I didn’t have a post that worked as a column and wrote a column at deadline. I labeled it in the blog as that week’s column. Here are a couple of examples.
I don’t see opinion as a significant difference. Both blogs and columns can be very opinionated or pretty straight (my agribusiness column at the Kansas City Star had little to no opinion and I’ve seen blogs that are devoted to straight news topics, such as breaking news).
A while back, Bill Dunphy asked my advice when he was pitching to become a columnist. I responded.
As noted above, I will be inviting several columnists and bloggers to respond with some of their thoughts on this question. If you’re a columnist, blogger or both, I welcome your response, even if I don’t invite you directly. You can email me — stephenbuttry (at) gmail (dot) com — about writing a guest post. Or you can comment here. Or send me a link if you want to address it on your column or blog. I’ll run the first couple of paragraphs here, then link to you.
A final note: One of the biggest disappointments of my career was not getting a columnist job when I was in Omaha. I wanted it desperately and thought it would have been a great fit both ways. In retrospect, I’m glad and relieved that didn’t work out. It might have pigeonholed me, where my blog helped boost my career and elevate my profile in a way that an Omaha column never could have.
Thanks to Teresa for starting a conversation about two of journalism’s most important roles.
Update: Here’s a response from Trentonian columnist Jeff Edelstein:
It’s a matter of degrees, and depends on the blogger. For instance, storytelling. Every column — outside of notes columns — is expected to tell a story. There’s still a beginning, middle and end, whether it be serious, humorous, or somewhere in between. Some bloggers do write their posts in such a fashion, and sure, they could be included under the umbrella of “columnist.” But most blogs do not. As you point out, they focus on narrow aspects of something, and don’t often tell stories as much as they … blog. (I know. Not defining it well. But you know it when you see it.)
Overall, the lines do blur, but if I had to come up with one major difference, it would be the storytelling factor. If you’re not telling a story, if you don’t have a beginning, middle and end, if you’re not at least attempting to make a larger point … then you’re not writing a column.
Thanks to Jeff for that response. I haven’t had time to invite responses from as many columnists and bloggers as I’d like, so I’ll reiterate this open invitation to columnists and bloggers to join the conversation. I think Jeff’s response applies to lots of columns (he’s a great storyteller). But I don’t think of opinion columns as telling stories.
Another update: I also asked Charles Apple, whose blog I referred to in this post if he would care to respond. I’m pleased that he did:
I’d agree with your take.
I actually think of my blog as a column. But you’re quite right about the differences. My blog wouldn’t work in print. In fact, the other day, someone wrote me to complain about my lack of an RSS feed. I had to scratch my head over that one. Why would anyone WANT to read my blog via RSS? There aren’t any visuals in an RSS feed. That I know of.
And things like frequency. I might post once a day. Or I might post seven or eight times a day, depending on news.
Another difference: You can pretty much count on the fact that a column has been edited. Most blogs don’t have copy editors. The writer is forced to be his own editor. This is, in fact, the part that I regret the most. I miss my copy desk.
But back in 2003, when API asked me to write a blog about wartime graphics, I said yes. And then I had to Google the word “blog.” My response to them: Oh, right. A column. You want me to write an online column. Sure, I can do that.
And that’s what I did. It wasn’t what Chad Capelman wanted at all: He wanted quick little snippets with links to resources. I was waxing on about philosophical things that factor into coverage and strategies and such. With links. But also pretty lengthy.
Chad liked it so much that he broke my stuff out into its own space, separate from his other bloggers. And that was my first blogging experience. Ever since then, that’s the way I approach my blog: It’s a column. But I can write any time I want, I can write any lengthy I want and I can stray off my topic if I want.
In a way, it’s the most self-indulgent type of column. Instead of an editor snapping me into line, it’s the readers. If they don’t like what I’m saying, I’ll get the message quickly enough when they stop coming to visit.
Great column, though.
I mean, blog. Great blog.
Excellent points by Charles. Both in the Twitter response and in some comments here, the issue of editing comes up. And, as an old copy editor, I have to agree with Charles and others that my blog would be better with an editor. Lots of good editors through the years have made my work better. But I’ll tell you another thing: I take more responsibility for the quality of my own work now than I did when I had layers of editors backstopping me. My observation has been that most journalists I know who blog make their copy much better than they used to turn in to their editors. And I think journalists taking responsibility for the quality of their work is a good thing.
Oct. 20 update: Alex Gorelik provided this observation on LinkedIn:
I would like to add, from observation, that in countries where media is somewhat fuzzy on the difference between “sponsorship” and “sponsored content” (e.g. Eastern Europe) blogs are often fuzzier than columns…
[…] I had an email exchange about the difference between a columnist and a blogger with Teresa Schmedding. Teresa is Assistant Managing Editor-Content Systems for the Daily Herald in the Chicago area and president of the American Copy Editors Society. She sent me the following email (used here with her consent): I’m having a conversation in my head about blogs v. columns.We’re getting ready to revamp our article page templates, pull our old blogs into our current CMS, which gives me an opportunity to re-train the staff on the purpose of a blog v. a column or an article. And, as I’m thinking about it, I’m thinking there really shouldn’t be much of a difference between a column and a blog. I started mapping out elements of a blog and here’s what I came up with: Key elements of blogs: Immediate access to readersHighly interactiveNo set deadline or publishing scheduleNo fixed lengthRelies on commentsMore casual in toneContinuous conversationThen, when I started mapping out elements of a column, it was pretty much the same. Seems to me that as time has passed, that the gap between the two has narrowed since we’re all pushing interaction as a key element.Writers should interact with readers on all online elements. It should all be immediate and involve continuous conversation. Only difference is a more formal tone or lack of opinion in an article.What do you think? complete article… https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/whats-the-difference-between-a-columnist-and-a-blogger/ […]
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The log in weblog seems to indicate an orderly record over time. At least it used to, and for the most part still does. But I think publications like TechCrunch are no longer blogs, but new media organizations. Of course, I always held the personal voice in a blog to be high on the list of what differentiated it from other types of publishing. So group blogs don’t exist in my book. That’s extreme, but makes sense if everything becomes distributed, even comments. And I don’t blame anyone for not holding their breath on that one. In the end, though, it is a word that is so new that it has no consensus for definition and is morphing as we speak. The methods used on many blogs for building communities and informing each other are likely timeless, at least for the foreseeable future, while we are all working on this version of the web.
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Excellent points, Matt. I do recognize group blogs as a type of blog, while also thinking voice is one of the most important features of a blog. I think your comment and my response highlight one issue: We know pretty well what a column is, but the blog is a new enough form of journalism that it has more variety and is evolving in multiple directions, some of them much like a column, some not.
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I like the rolling log that accumulates to present an orderly record. As a library student working in a media industry producing increasingly digital content, I wonder about how that content will be archived and made available for future generations.
As libraries manage collections of books that are increasingly digital, will they see a similar shift in the way that they archive newspapers? As access platforms change, it’s important to me that digital content remains available.
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Concerning group blogs: I have access privileges and I discovered on one occasion that someone had used my log-in to sign in and post an entry.
Nothing damaging, just not what I blog about and not something about which I could offer follow-up if someone turned to me for more information.
I agree that it can be difficult to preserve a personal voice when contributing to a group blog. When I post to the group blog, I sign all of my entries.
Also, given that it’s WordPress, I can route all my entries to one particular category and I’m the only one who uses it.
Like you, I value the personal voice and I think that voice is more readily apparent on my personal blog.
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I think the semantical problem is obvious to everyone in that “blog” describes both a publishing platform and it has also come to mean a writing style, a certain type of content, etc. As you point out Steve, something can technically be posted online as a blog, using a blogging platform, but also not be a blog in the true sense of the word. And of course the issue is still the emotional and psychological attachment people have to the word “blog” vs the word “column” or “story” or whatnot. I think that among many print people, “blog” still denotes something they are not totally comfortable with or accustomed to. I realize of course that this is changing (and you’re a perfect example), I’d actually love to know how frequently newspaper people read blogs that aren’t on a news site, aren’t a huge, popular blog like TechCrunch or Mashable, etc. Any idea?
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I think you’ve successfully highlighted the differences between columns and blogs. I am new to blogging, having first had my opinions aired in the Lake County Record-Bee.
I am pleased to see that some of the practices I adopted since I started to blog are highlighted here by you.
Some additional points I would like to add are that columns benefit from an additional reader’s input (i.e. an editor or proofreader for the print or online section that the column is destined for) as part of the publishing process, whereas when I blog, I serve as my own editor.
My second observation is that columns are published by a branded, respected source of journalism. (Some bloggers may also have this advantage if the blogging platform is hosted by the media company).
From personal experience, I know traffic to my blog doesn’t come anywhere near the numbers of potential readers I enjoy when my opinion is distributed by Lake County Publishing.
Thank you for an informative post. I look forward to further viewpoints concerning the differences and similarities between a column and a blog.
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Aaaaand here’s what I was talking about. From Cynthia’s comment:
“My second observation is that columns are published by a branded, respected source of journalism. (Some bloggers may also have this advantage if the blogging platform is hosted by the media company).”
Maybe I’m wrong to assume that this assigns second-class status to bloggers who do not blog for a “respected source of journalism,” but it definitely sounds that way.
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Anna, I don’t think Cynthia meant it that way. But the brand is a factor (both positive and negative) in columns. The brand affects the voice, dictates a framework and adds a layer of quality control (the editing Cynthia referred to). A blog that is independent of the brand can be bolder, more imaginative and more aggressive than a brand. And certainly there are horrifically bad blogs out there, some of which would never fly as a column. I think the individuality of independent blogs allows for experimentation that will lead to brands surpassing the respect of newspapers (think Mashable, Talking Points Memo, TechCrunch) but also allows for quality blogs about narrow-interest topics a newspaper might disdain and allows for low-quality blogs.
Teresa’s question to me was in the context of people working for a newsroom, where the brand and its standards are a factor for both bloggers and journalists.
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Indeed. I certainly do not mean offense, I’m simply identifying a factor. A media company’s reputation drives viewers to the site and those bloggers benefit. It doesn’t mean that they are “better” in any way and as Steve points out, there are negative factors to this association too.
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Good to hear 🙂 I’m a bit touchy, because I started out as a blogger and I still consider it my primary identity so to speak even though I now work (as of this week) for a print publication.
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Excellent point, Cynthia. A mediocre columnist for a respected brand starts out with an audience. An excellent independent blogger works his or her ass off to build an audience.
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I’ve personally always found that more than a little bit sad. Just because you work for a media company, you start out with an audience by default. Honestly, this gets at an issue I feel about strongly and that’s where attention is directed online in general. We’d like to believe that content is king, but we also all know it doesn’t actually work that way. It’s not a meritocracy.
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[…] What’s the difference between a columnist and a blogger? I had an email exchange about the difference between a columnist and a blogger with Teresa Schmedding. Teresa is Assistant Managing Edito… […]
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Your point about blog posts serving as raw material for formal columns is dead on. That was often my MO when I wrote a formal tech column.
So is your point about interactivity. Many of my blog posts are conversations, though in my case these exchanges often occur elsewhere, typically on social networks. I then harvest some of that material (via tweet embedding and other methods) for use on the post that spurred the conversation.
In that sense, many of my posts are living documents with one or more updates prompted by online exchanges with others. This post is a good example of that: http://bitly.com/T7uHg3
Let’s not forget that the best columns as well as the best blogs aspire to commit actual journalism (duh), though blogs have greater flexibility in how they do this.
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It occurs to me that, in another sense, blogs are columns for the digital age.
The similarities are obvious; they are both journalism with a personality and point of view.
But while columns in the traditional sense are mainly text, blogs can go crazy with images, video, social network embeds and more.
In that regard many of my posts are often crazy-awesome digital quilts. This is BIG fun in a way a column never can be.
To circle back, though, many of my posts are column-style – one long piece of carefully crafted text to make a point or argument. I can almost feel my brain switching into “column” mode when I write such posts.
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Reblogged this on this curious universe.
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Every week I have readers refer to one of my blog posts as a column, though it wasn’t written as a “column.” That’s instructive, I think.
More and more, I am either cutting my online columns to fit my newspaper’s holes, or adding to the column once I’ve submitted it to the paper. Links, photos, relevant videos — and I sometimes go back to it a second and third time to add to it.
Plus, I’m not afraid to edit the text if I look at something with fresh eyes the next day and want to change it. This is wandering off topic, I know,
I’m wired to write columns, even in shorter or longer blog-post form. I may need to rewire.
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No need to rewire, Mike. You’re one of the best at both. That’s why I asked for your response. Thanks!
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As the writer, for the last decade, of a monthly print magazine column that is also published online, I agree with the distinctions drawn by you and Teresa. But the increasing blurring of the (barely) two genres makes those distinctions useful for little more than this sort of professional examination (I changed that from “navel gazing.)
Part of the identity of a column is where it “lives,” something that has decreasing relevance in a world of increasing media atomization. Sure, favorite local columnists will remain, but an increasing portion of their traffic will come from serendipitous social media recommendations. Plus, except for a few cobwebby corners, print is vanishing.
In short, there is no practical difference.
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Thanks to all for these thoughtful comments and this great discussion. I’ve been traveling and visiting with family gathering for a wedding, so I won’t be able to join the discussion as much as I’d like, but I deeply appreciate it and I believe Teresa will find it helpful.
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I use this post as an example to my students of the “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” style of debate. One of them pointed out in class that Charles Apple’s blog does actually have an RSS feed. The fact that he doesn’t know this may be why he thinks that RSS feeds are used for reading blog posts rather than reading headlines.
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Actually, people use blog posts both ways. I inadvertently changed my RSS feed from full-text to just a paragraph or two and learned from a few people that they do read in RSS.
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Let me provide a reader’s perspective – currently I subscribe to 142 feeds. Many of these might update once a week, or once a month, but I want to hear those voices where they post.
I’m reading this page because of a link referral from another blog I subscribe to (Not Rocket Science in case you’re wondering). If I like what I see I will add you to my subscription list so I can see what you write next. But anyone without full-text feeds has to have a /really/ good teaser to get me to click through, because I am skimming 90-100 articles a day on these feeds. In general, having no full-text feed will mean I don’t subscribe at all…
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Excellent point. I haven’t used RSS in years, but once I inadvertently changed (or WordPress changed, because I couldn’t figure how I had done it) my RSS from full-text to teases. A couple friends who appreciated the full-text feed complained and I figured out how to change it back. You can’t control how people experience your blog (even if they come to your blog, they will use different browsers, different display settings, etc.). But you want to give them multiple options.
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[…] What’s the difference between a columnist and a blogger? Steve Buttry, digital transformation editor for Digital First Media, proposes a list of differences and adds, “. . . One of the biggest disappointments of my career was not getting a columnist job when I was in Omaha. I wanted it desperately and thought it would have been a great fit both ways. In retrospect, I’m glad and relieved that didn’t work out. It might have pigeonholed me, where my blog helped boost my career and elevate my profile in a way that an Omaha column never could have.” […]
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The differences are basic in nature. The idea of both a column and a blog is the same which is to emanate info in an impactful way. But the differences lie in the mode and quickness.
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This is a great topic. And a lot of good thoughts here. As a business and tech columnist, let me try to offer a couple of additional thoughts.
Rather than focusing on which comes first (the column or the blog), I see them as fluid. Most of my columns are heavily reported and not necessarily off an immediate news item. In which case, I’m comfortable with those going to our main site first, then print.
But usually, I gather more material than I can use in a column. So I try to turn some of that into a post that is more narrowly focused one one fact, or idea or argument. Also, I think of the blog as a place to aim a bit more for insiders, vs. the print or Web version which we try to steer toward a more general audience.
I find in general that our columnist and reporters know a lot, and keep a lot in their notebooks that never makes the main stories. The blog is a chance to get that out there.
When I think of stuff that’s blog-first, I think of it as a place to test ideas and quick thoughts off a hot news item. Off I have a strong gut reaction on a big story, and the blog is great for getting that thought out quickly, getting some reaction, and thinking through the strengths and weaknesses of my viewpoint. Usually I haven’t stopped to interview a lot of folks when I post. I usually do that after…
In any case, my main point here is that I see the relationship between blog-website-print as being fluid.
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[…] remains a popular topic. Turning an email exchange into a blog post, I explained what I see as differences between a blogger and a columnist, getting more than 1,000 views. (I’ve done this often before; if someone asks me a question […]
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[…] dei nostri quotidiani mi è venuta leggendo il post di Steve Buttry dall’esplicativo titolo What’s the difference between a columnist and a blogger?. Buttry scrive partendo da uno scambio di mail con Teresa Schmedding, Assistant Managing […]
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I go to sfgate.com all the time, for example, and there are columns and blogs alike with the same format available to the reader: click, read and comment. I am assuming that any kind of material has to pass editorial muster with the parent news organization, Hearst Communications. The columns appear to be more material-oriented, neutral of opinion, while the blogs are the exclusive commentary of the author who simply regurgitates whatever is on his mind at that particular point, and the focus is towards the accumulation of comments while pushing the envelope of what can be said. Some bloggers provide material that would never appear in print and are the exclusive domain of the internet, yet columnists seem more protocol-bound.
My point is that there seems to be such a scant difference between the two given how the websites are set up, and it doesn’t seem that one title has more prestige over the other.
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We can say a difference between journalism and columnist/blogger writing but i don’t see any mental difference between blogger and columnist. Regarding the time and the platform we changed the way of sharing but both are subjective authors who wants to reach their audiences.
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For some reason, this is still generating comments. Here’s my original comment from 2012:
As the writer, for the last decade, of a monthly print magazine column that is also published online, I agree with the distinctions drawn by you and Teresa. But the increasing blurring of the (barely) two genres makes those distinctions useful for little more than this sort of professional examination (I changed that from “navel gazing.)
Part of the identity of a column is where it “lives,” something that has decreasing relevance in a world of increasing media atomization. Sure, favorite local columnists will remain, but an increasing portion of their traffic will come from serendipitous social media recommendations. Plus, except for a few cobwebby corners, print is vanishing.
In short, there is no practical difference.
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