The Pilot

An aviator, navigating the sky.  A continual flame, ready for greater purpose.  Episode one, establishing characters, story, structure, style and tone.

Clearly, this 'pilot' post shares qualities with each of these definitions.  As I navigate the internet, hungry for New Media, I intend for this blog to serve a greater purpose than its mere existence.

Quoting The Economist, "A new blog is created every second of every day."  And that was back in 2006, so you can only imagine the rampant creation of new, personal, online journals today.  Quoting my high school chemistry teacher, "In the great scheme of things, it doesn't matter."  Not to devalue academic appraisal, but in the great scheme of this blog, I want my time spent in thought, and the commitment to a creative endeavor to mean something.  

And so, in my inaugural post, I present a glimpse of the big picture:

I will save the explanation for a later date, when the idea for a blog-driven site that covers local music, entertainment, politics and news is fully flushed out.  For now,  suffice it to say I borrowed the idea from The Gothamist Group, an incredibly helpful network of websites, perfect for the 20-something hipster, 30-something foodie, and 40-something community activist, alike.

To recoup:

1. Navigate through New Media, using the SWC 200 syllabus as a rubric.
   
2. Be more than an academic blog for academic's sake.
   
3. Establish character, story, structure, style and tone.
   

Character is easy.  Me, interacting with the New Media texts provided throughout the course and those tracked down for second helpings.  However, considering the ideas of veteran blogger Andrew Sullivan, in Why I Blog, the biggest character of all is audience.  He states that the readers keep a blog author, or blothor (no? blogger? ok.), in check better than any editor could.

"To the charges of inaccuracy and unprofessionalism, bloggers could point to the fierce, immediate scrutiny of their readers… They will send links, stories, and facts, challenging the blogger’s view of the world, sometimes outright refuting it, but more frequently adding context and nuance and complexity to an idea. The role of a blogger is not to defend against this but to embrace it. He is similar in this way to the host of a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate."

Within the realm of academic blogging, though, shouldn't ideas be flushed out to the fullest before commentors feast on the scraps?  Would a theorist leave any thought unfinished?  I doubt it.

That said, the immediacy of the blog, inherent in the digitally published form, and having come to be expected by the audience, does not lend towards complete arguments.  The position of the author is given weight, and the counter-position is often left to the reader.  Good blogging, according to Sullivan, can be attributed to “not just saying what you think when you think it… but also airing the alternative arguments.”

In airing founded personal opinion, a conversational tone lends best to the New Media vehicle.  David Winer, a blogging pioneer, described blog writing as raw, with unpolished authenticity (The Economist's It's the Links, Stupid).  So, where does the authority of an academic blog come from in a medium where anyone can say anything?  Must a writer display an advanced vocabulary or does the referencing of authorized texts pass along the license to be taken seriously?  Maybe readership is a way to quantify authority, but how would a new blog (such as this) come into good repute?

Sullivan claims that if an author has the self confidence to simply put their words out there, without overly considering the audience, the roughness will provide a "real" sense.

So this is what I have done.  And here we go...