Thoughts on essay journalling

[robotech_master]

Well, I've gone ahead and updated my essay journal again (also available as an LJ-friend RSS feed at allivegottosay by the way, though my ego would tend to prefer you visiting the site itself also for hitcount :) with a post about the Olympic branding thing that was on BoingBoing earlier today. I'd drop links in here, but hey, the links are already in my journal essay, why be redundant?

I like writing little essays where I can do more than just link to a single news URL and say "look at this." I mean, that's all most of the people out there do, and if you've seen one of those stories you've seen them all. I prefer to tie a few other links in and say, "Hey, look at this other thing and see how it relates to this first thing, and see how they look when viewed in light of each other." I think it's more useful, and it feels closer to "legitimate" journalism somehow.

Comments

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Of course, in my case, I'm not trying to be a journalist - my LJ is a publically viewable diary and a backup method for keeping in touch with people.

So I put things there that I hope people will find useful, and commentary, if any, is as sparse and cut to the bone as the descriptive lettuce around the dialogue I write.

On the other limb, my responses in other people's LJ's appear to be verbose beyond ridiculousity. (OK, evil coined word, 10 points.)

[strix-an-stones.livejournal.com]

I agree with you robotech_master. If you are going to simply present somethng you want to draw attnetion to, then place a link. If you wish to have or express an opinion then you should spell it out. In that instance it may help in the development of your point to list the link as a reference or you could simply quote the article at the relevant points as news print agencies do.

Then again you can go to another extreme, like I did, when expressing my viewpoint on the issue of Vietnam in the upcoming Bush-Kerry election. Drawing for my experiences and interviews conducted with vets I summarized the points that influenced my decisions and opinions into short stories and then ended it with my "editorial". Sometimes you can get more attention by a graphic illustration than by facts. The reading public is odd that way.