When I started this blog, it was not clear to what extent I would use it for my own original writing. But as will have been noticed, there have been quite a few posts with such writing recently (most of them in Swedish).
Blogging certainly cannot replace writing for academic journals, for instance. But I have to say that increasingly, in the case of articles that could be published in a daily newspaper, I have doubts when I consider sending them there, and when people ask why I don’t do so more often.
Newspapers undoubtedly still reach many people – but not as many as they used to. They reach many influential people – but not as many as they used to. They also certainly pay – but not as much as they used to.
Above all, there is the cheap paper, the increasingly vulgar ads, the often no less tasteless photos, the chaotic, arbitrary juxtaposition of different kinds of articles, the many typos and the poor editing. And, with the exception of the paper quality, all of this is even more crude and aggressively vulgar, as it were, in the web editions than in the paper ones.
The newspapers are simply no longer an attractive reading environment, if I may put it that way.
Indeed, although good writing can of course still be found in them, the declining general linguistic competence and the lowered stylistic standards of today’s editors, journalists, and columnists would make the newspapers relatively uninteresting even if the writing could be more tastefully packaged.
This is all of course a consequence of our continuously deteriorating general humanistic culture and educational system. And it is also a fact that the intellectual and cultural level of even the best among the big newspapers is increasingly such that they are regularly read mainly by the less discerning and comparatively less knowledgeable.
More and more, they come to belong in the same category as radio and television. Their readers are primarily found among people in older generations without higher education. And those with real, traditional higher education (not just technical training) in older generations are the ones who complain the loudest about the lowered standards.
The young and insightful find not just more adequate reporting and commentary in what is now often the only place where these things can be found: in blogs and on alternative news and other sites on the internet. If they are properly selective, they can even find formally and stylistically better writing there.
And since it is much easier to find older posts (easier even than articles in the web editions of the newspapers), the blog post is also a less ephemeral genre than the newspaper article. In comparison with texts in well-designed and well-organized blogs at least, there is, given the character and feel of today’s daily newspapers, something almost inescapably and irredeemably trashy about a newspaper article.
For these reasons, it is not unlikely that I will continue to write more frequently and regularly in this new genre of the blog post.
