On Blogs and the Last Word

[Originally posted on January 15, 2005]

I have some thoughts about my Blog and its purpose. First, I want to prove that a person can write a lot about anything and on any subject - even Subway restaurants. I remember a writing exercise I had to do in a Creative Writing class in college. The instructor made a list of topic suggestions he solicited during a brainstorming session assignment. He did not tell us why. He said it was an exercise in brainstorming ideas. At the next class meeting, to our surprise, he handed out a printed numbered list of the topics and assigned to each of us a numbered topic. He told us that in the space of the next 40 minutes he wanted us to write a coherent piece of writing on the assigned topic. A tough assignment. Somehow I managed to write a page on a topic I no longer remember. The point of the exercise was to show us what the pressure was like to be a journalist who had to write on demand. The secondary purpose was to show us if we wanting to be writers one must be able to write about anything at a drop of a hat. It mattered little if you knew nothing about the topic - a writers skills was in the writing, not the subject matter. Subject can always be researched, he said. Our job was to make it coherent and readable.

Secondly, as I reads what passes as Blogs on the Internet, I notice that only a few are both readable and factual. Many Blogs I have seen are stream-of-consciousness drivel written by young minds searching for meaning in their lives or
essays written with a hidden agenda (or often not so hidden) to sway a readers opinion on a specific subject. Often these latter Blogs are filled with facts that are chosen to 'prove' the writers point of view or facts that are outright falsehoods and/or distortions. I feel uneasy about Blogsters that post personal thoughts and feelings on the Net. I am uncomfortable with the idea that one's personal thoughts can be accessed by anyone in the world. I am also concerned that much misinformation and disinformation is passed from one disaffected person to another via these Blogs. It is bad enough that fake and distorted events are passed from person to person with e-mail. The thought that Blog distortions can effect national events, as has happened over the past couple of years, is more disturbing. The problem is that many Blogs are not fact-checked. As a person trained in research, I am concerned that almost all blogs are not supported by the standard rules of research: Is the writer authoritative? Are the facts supported by evidence? Is the source definitive? Is the source reliable? For this reason, I try to incorporate facts in my Blog. For example, if you want to confirm the facts about my post on Subway, go to www.subway.com and you will see where I confirmed most of my factual statements.

Last, the reason why I choose to call this Blog my 'Last Word' was not due to some sort of arrogant attitude that I knew the answers to everything. It is more personal than that. I am writing these blogs to rid myself of thinking about the topic. Thoughts about topic such as Subways and Bagels permeate my percolating mind and sit there like stale coffee grounds until I get them out. Once out I rarely think about the idea again. My hope for my Blog is that once I get out my thoughts on a subject, it will delete itself from my head and I would not think about it too much after that. And THAT is why I hope it is the 'last word'. Not that it is truly the last word but that, for me, once I write it down, it will disappear and I won't think about it anymore.

And that's the last word on the last word.