Hacks Don't Care About Blogs

Kristine goes on to share her own experiences:

Friends urged me to start blogging as early as 2001, but
back then I felt there was no way I could find time: I was too busy
chasing work, chasing deadlines. I regret that now, but am glad I
finally got going when I did. The only hitch: it’s addictive.

Kristine’s words echo those of one of our keenest bloggers,
who I bumped into in our canteen this lunchtime. “It’s a full time job,
it really is,” he moaned in much the way that men moan about wives whom
they deeply, passionately love. But the interesting bit was that he
described blogging as a promise to the reader, one that grows on an
on-going basis. Now he’s blogged straight after press launches, people
expect him to do it. The “when I get around to it” of traditional
journalism becomes “the sooner the better”.

People don’t like
being taken out of their comfort zone, and there’s something about
blogging, with its lack of set deadlines, but its constant pressure to
fill the hungry blog maw that some of my fellow hacks find unsettling.
But if this is what readers want, they we’d better adapt, if we still
want a job.