Another Opportunity for Self-Referentialism

I read this from Scott Karp in the post "The Only Way For Journalists To Understand The Web Is To Use It":

Print publishing is easy to explain and understand. Web publishing, in contrast, is counter-intuitive — it’s multi-faceted and complex.

The only way to really understand web publishing intuitively is to DO IT.

I submit that it's easier for some journalists to do this than others.

Take David Allen, columnist for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. He has had a blog since September 2007. Here's part of what Allen said when he started blogging:

Why do a blog AND three columns a week? Because overkill is underrated. Also, it's an experiment on my part.

I find more material than I can always get into print in a timely way, I get entertaining comments from readers (especially reminiscences about the recent past) there's no room for and I notice things around the valley, such as business closures, that I can't think of much to elaborate on but that ought to be put on the record.

Moreover, I try new restaurants and almost never write about them, and I journey outside the valley to places you might like to read about -- for instance, I was at the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena for its closing weekend -- but that my column isn't really set up to chronicle.

Thus, this blog.

But it's not just an outlet for extra stuff.

Your readership and comments are encouraged and will help this experiment succeed.

And this goes to why someone like David Allen is better suited to blogging. Allen has always been an interactive columnist, taking cues from his readership. How interactive, you may ask? Well, as I have noted more than once (see item 4), Allen actually quoted me in one of his Daily Bulletin columns nearly ten years ago (September 13, 1998, to be exact).

So if he could put up with my ravings in the twentieth century, I think David Allen can interact on a web 2.0 level in the twenty-first.

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