Blog Writing

Be sure to vote for Bob Gentry...

While Kelly is away, I’m here to entertain you.  Instead of the usual post from Kelly, I am going to expand on a conversation she and I had. No, it’s not about our personal lives, although I have a great story about Mr. Octopus—a guy I met a couple of weeks ago now. I will have to save that for later. Today I want to talk about blogs and professional writing. I truly took offense to a statement that blogs aren’t professional writing. I think there are lots of bloggers out there who would agree with me.

Believe it or not, you can get paid to blog—no not by putting ads on your site. There are groups and companies who will pay someone to write a blog about a certan topic or products. In my research, I even found added support for what I’m telling you here. And it’s not recent. It’s an article by Meg Hourihan (one of the founders of Blogger). You might ask where I found an abundance of articles on blogs…at the Purdue University website for English 515:  Advanced Professional Writing. The class had to blog as part of their grade. So although many of us blog just for enjoyment, it’s not just hurling whatever comes to mind onto your blog. Even those bloggers who appear to do this aren’t.

Here’s a quote from Meg:  “Blog posts are short, informal, sometimes controversial, and sometimes deeply personal, no matter what topic they approach. They can be characterized by their conversational tone and unlike a more formal essay or speech, a blog post is often an opening to a discussion, rather than a full-fledged argument already arrived at.” 

I liked this quiote and happen to agree, but it doesn't mean that blogs aren't professional writing. Developing your voice is an important part of being a writer.

Liz

Comments

[James Cooper]

What comprises a blog is up for individual interpretation. Back prior to the advent of blogging software, services, or even the term blog people kept personal homepages which chronicled their days and observations much as one would have in a journal or diary. The primary difference being that these chronicles were put up in a public forum rather than a private journal.

The quality of those writings varied greatly as would the quality of writing in different people's private journals. Somewhere along the way the term weblog came along, was shortened to blog, and tools such as Blogger came along. At this point blogs started becoming very mainstream and people were fast to jump on. After a short while professional writers took notice as well and established their presence in the so-called blogosphere.

Therefore I do agree that there are blogs which qualify as professional writing, or at least professional-quality writing. And certainly there are many professional forums such as online newspapers and magazines experimenting with the blogging format. However, as many blogs remain online versions of personal journals I would equate them to the same degree of professionalism as most private paper journals and therefore would argue that there are bloggers who simply are "hurling whatever comes to mind" on their blogs.

[Charles]

Paid to blog. Hmm. On whether or not blogs constitute professional writing, I'd say that it depends on the blogger. Many professional writers have blogs and I would say that their writing on them is professional. Some bloggers who are not professional writers still manage to post quality material, however.

[thaed]

Blogging is part of the reason that newspapers across the country are laying off employees and shrinking in size. Many "professional writers" use blogs to supplement their writing that appears in print. Look at John C. Dvorak. Robert Scoble is a hugely popular blogger and he also wrote a book. There's a sliding scale of quality among blogs, but there's no question that some bloggers are professional writers and that some blogs constitute professional writing.

[Ricardo]

I'm just trying to get someone to pay me for my screenplays ;-)

But I'm all for the idea of getting paid to blog. Beats the 9 to 5 grind.

[DrJay]

I'm a professional writer who initially decided that I should start a blog to promote my writing, then, seeing that google would put ads on it that I could conceivably make money from, I did that (though I haven't, at this point, gotten a penny). Surprisingly, though, I've found that it's such an incredible outlet for thoughts and little bits of things that wouldn't fit in with any more conventional genre of writing that the promotional/money aspects have kind of fallen to the wayside. Now it exists to be what it is, whether or not there's anything technically "professional" about it.

[G Kumar]

Dear Dr Jay,

I am like you, a writer turned blogger, and I am getting monthly checks from Google and Adbrite.

Just check out my blog site, www.eastrovedica.net, with 21 categories and 388 posts. Just one month and I am getting 600 hits per day.

Thanx for your time,

G Kumar
www.eastrovedica.net