Jason Kottke on web magazines:
“Before weblogs ruled the realm, a typical way to publish content online was in a Web magazine format. Suck, Feed, Netly News, Smug, Stating the Obvious, etc.”
Jason followed up in a later comment with this:
“Suck articles were finished and “professional”, which is what’s missing (I think) from my online reading these days.”
I wrote the following as a comment in Jason’s weblog, but I think it’s worth publishing here too. It’s an interesting issue and I’d be keen to hear your feedback. Here’s what I wrote (tidied up slightly):
I wonder if weblogs are making our reading and writing habits temporal and ‘always unfinished’ (to twist the term ‘always on’)? Having written an article for Digital Web Magazine (and I must get around to writing another one), I can confirm it takes at least a couple of weeks to ‘craft’. Whereas with my weblog, although generally I write carefully crafted long-form posts, it’s still of-the-moment and a lot of times it’s an ongoing theme I’m exploring (ie it’s not “finished”).
I would probably write more “finished” articles for my blog if I didn’t feel so much (social?) pressure to continually update my RSS feed. As it is, I only write an average of 3 posts per/week anyway, but still…
And same goes for my reading. To participate in the blogosphere you have to keep up-to-date with the RSS feeds in your circle of influence. Which leaves less time for reading “professional” and finished articles.
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)