Garden Monkey sent me a link this morning to a piece about whether serious critical writing is going to get killed off by blogs. Brian Sewell reckons there's an argument against the democratisation of criticism: that amateurs will never do as good a job as the "skilled". But there are so many great things about blogs (spontaneity, intimacy, and the potential for developing long-standing private jokes about time-lapse photography are three that immediately spring to my mind).
Whatever the good points of blogging, though, the holy grail of bloggers is generally (as Jay Rayner points out) to become "real" professionals.
Typepad are celebrating three such successes this morning on the front page, and in the much tinier world of garden blogs we are currently toasting Deb from Beholder's Eye who has won a Malvern Autumn Show garden commission, and Emma Cooper, aka Fluffius Muppetus who had her first piece in The Guardian this weekend - about eating weeds.
Worth pointing out that I only know about these two utterly delightful bits of news from Garden Monkey. GM is on average more likely to be getting abused for being a wickedly malicious stirrer, but in my experience can be most often accused of being generous, thoughtful and proud of friends' achievements in a grown-up and verging on proudly parental fashion.
(Not that the Monkey will necessarily thank me for tarnishing their reputation with this allegation of genuine niceness.)
Anyway, I have some thank-yous to do regarding the Big Green Leaf: to everybody who posted pictures, to everyone who looked at the pics, and especially to those who took the time to comment. Installing Google Analytics can be good for the ego, but nice comments are better. I would particularly single out Victoria and VP who I noticed posting all over the place.
But in terms of my overall highlights: I've told everyone I know about Mrs Be's vegetable spectacular; I love Nancy Bond's utterly appropriate Robert Frost poem; I admired the pristine hostas of Lisa Greenbow; Q's Sunday Bug Safari; Joy Best's best efforts to make a garden despite raccoons and naughty boat-toting relatives; Zoe's mind-altering kaleidoscope of greens with special huge rave choon; and Karen the Artist's Garden's wonderful and funny gold, silver and bronze awards.
My best plant discovery was Hoe and Shovel's variegated shell ginger, and a Jatropha "Buddha Belly" - yum. But these are just little glimpses of the pleasure I got trawling round the whole lot. Thank you all so much for taking part. And while we're raising our glasses, let's toast the benign authority of the blogosphere. Long may we all - ever so democratically - reign.
Amen to that, I think there is room for everyone!
Well said Emma.
Posted by: Zoë | Monday, 14 July 2008 at 06:49 PM
A very thought provoking piece Emma. Having read the links and subsequent comments what I want to say is this:
What better way is there of learning the craft of writing than by blogging? I've had this discussion with a couple of professional writers lately who also blog and they've said they use it for 'writing exercises'. They also said it's vastly improved and informed their other writing. The sponteneity of the medium, its broader outreach and the ability to leave Comments means the learning process for the writer can be far quicker than the more traditional approach.
I'm not a writer nor am I a gardening expert, but I do have a desire to communicate about things I feel are interesting. If I don't know something, then I'll try and find impartial links that will provide the information I can't, should the reader want to explore further. Does my non-expertise invalidate what I write? I hope not. And the feedback and encouragement I've had both online and behind the scenes suggests I'm OK at what I'm doing. I believe it's the same for a lot of bloggers I've read - in the gardening blogosphere at least.
I think there's room for both printed and online media - it's up to the reader to be critical of what they read and choose for themselves. Communication is shifting, similar in some ways to what's happened in film industry since the 1920s. It's very different today, but it's still here. Perhaps the same applies to both writing and criticism.
Posted by: VP | Monday, 14 July 2008 at 08:18 PM
Yo
Posted by: Look at me | Monday, 14 July 2008 at 10:38 PM
I read the original piece with interest at the weekend. My problem is I don't know who to place my faith in.
The issue with blogs is that there's so many of them. To find out which ones are actually any good would take you two hours a day of being on the internet. At least a newspaper acts as a kind of critical sieve to filter out the rubbish. It's not that I need someone to be "trained" - I just can't be bothered to spend my whole life online.
Also sometimes I get the impression that hardly anyone reads blogs. I think Jay Rayner says in his piece that this big food blog gets 7,000 readers a week at best. Whilst in one sense this is a lot, in another, it's paltry. I'm worried that in medialand, people are jumping on a bandwagon by exalting the blogs without thinking whether they want to be dictated to by cybercritics who can only attract tiny niche audiences. And that the audience is often other blog writers, so there's a cat chasing its' own tail scenario where there isn't actually a "readership", just other bloggers who want love for their own blogs.
S
Posted by: Not so sure myself | Tuesday, 15 July 2008 at 04:41 PM
The question is though, how many people read Jay Rayner's articles? At least he knows 7,000 people read his blog every week. Maybe only half that actually read him in newsprint. It might take you a couple of hours initially, but it doesn't take that long every day. You find one you like, you add it to your RSS feed and that's that. I write a blog that 1,000 people subscribe to - that's more than subscribe to my local newspaper. Blogging is here to stay, and while there absolutely is lots and lots and lots of dross, spam, for family only, etc, material out there, the cutting edge writing, the really interesting stuff, is being blogged.
Posted by: jakers | Tuesday, 15 July 2008 at 11:25 PM
I do sympathise with the idea that we need a metablog to tell us which blogs are any good...
Posted by: emma townshend | Wednesday, 16 July 2008 at 03:57 PM
Sorry I hadn't quite finished that thought.
I do sympathise with the perceived need to have some sort of summary of which blogs are any good, to save time. Yet curiously, this is how professional critics came into being in the beginning. A professional writer is employed to trawl their way through the world and present you with the best bits so that you don't have to.
I think commenters may well often be other bloggers - I spend an enormous amount of time commenting, because i know how nice it is when someone comments here. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the silent majority of readers are all bloggers.
??
Posted by: emma townshend | Wednesday, 16 July 2008 at 04:00 PM