Writing Machines is the course website for English 170L at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
A blog is...?
Submitted by Pimm on 4 September 2006 - 7:53pm.
I’m basically completely new to the world of blogs, so it’s been a fun yet oddly tiring thing for me to search and read all sorts of blogs in an attempt to learn about them. The more I read, the more complicated my definition of “blog” becomes. Though I’m not a photographer myself, I love looking at photographs, and one blog I found and really like is Photoblogs. It makes me wonder, though, how much sites like these—with more photographs than text, or even no photographs—are considered true blogs. (I guess a similar site is the one marmalade posted called Postsecret.)
As a side note, I searched the word “blog” on The New York Times website and was frustrated to learn that some of the New York Times blogs can only be viewed by TimesSelect members. I understand that since the blogs are under New York Times “ownership”, they can control who views them, but it still surprised me. Isn’t one of the main purposes of blogging the idea that the information is free for anyone on the web to view? What do these restrictions mean for the definition and readership of blogs?
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About the New York Times
About the New York Times blogs--I noticed that, too. When I'm at home, I can use my mother's print subscription to log in, but since I've been at school, I haven't been able to access them.
This "Times Select" thing is in some ways it's quite annoying, but I think (ultimately) it's understandable. If the NYT offered all of its content for free online, there would be no incentive for people to buy their print newspaper. And the NYT is originally a print media with two sources of income: ads and subscriptions. And they're not going to willingly cut their budget in half! Basically it's part of that collision between the print world and the internet--some aspects just don't translate well. Like being "free".
An
An interesting/theoretical/amusing/funny/serious, if extreme (but informative) take on the print subscription model and how it is affected by the web.
This spills over into the discussions about digitizing books and how copyright 'works' in the digital world etc.