Don't Hurt the Children
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I've been cheating on you
Dear Art,
I have been cheating on you, Mr. ARTicles blog. Look, I couldn't help it. I found Facebook baby and it was almost all over between you and me. Facebook is fun, quick, easy and has lots of playtoys and games and friends. No strings attached. You can write what you want and take full responsibility with nobody accusing you of hurting people or misrepresenting the field. It's not serious. It's social. And I have enjoyed every minute (upon minute upon minute upon minute).
Meanwhile, the potential blog items for you, Mr. ARTicles, have mounted, cluttering up my Drafts Inbox. I can find every excuse in the book for not tackling them. Generally speaking it's the research that's deters me. It's the commitment.
But I am back in your fold, now, because as with all good things in life, you get what you give and, the blog, in spite of its passive aggressive stranglehold on one's journalism-conscience is the more rewarding relationship.
Among your many constraints to which I will yield is this: You love news, breaking news, news nobody else knows. I have plenty of that. I knew about the Getty layoffs, Jennifer Dunning and Bernard Holland taking the buyouts and I also know who will win the Tony for Best Musical. But, if I tell, I have to keep telling. I have to get it right each and every time. AND I will have many enemies, which damages my real job, the one that pays me. (In the future I will take the risk when it is ethically right to do so. Promise.)
Your second love is regularity. Sorry, Bud, but that gets boring.
Third passion of yours is for brevity. I just feel it. You, Mr. Blogman ARTicles macho-super whip, prefer the terse and tasty touch. Yet, my favorite bloggers write long and detailed stories. But I fall in love with them at first sight. If they don't catch me on the first graph, they will never catch me. So, I have decided that you like it short, because I am too chicken and too overworked to dedicate days and days to developing a good story, because they don't come naturally to me anyway. (And you know that, you do.)
Your concession to me and others is to find rapture in visuals. You are an arts blog after all, and it suits you fine to see and hear, as much as it is to read. (I love YouTube, too!!!! Just like you!) And images -- like the Ruth Fremson photo in the NYT today of Rauschenberg's "Interscape" backdrop for Cunningham -- made me tingle all over, and I could feel you tingle even though we weren't talking.
If
So here's the new deal: Let's try it again. I have to be accurate and credible. But not predictable or regular. I won't betray friends or colleagues or artists in the push to be the first with the news. (Yet my passion is news. I pine to break it.) But, in return, you have to deliver the readers and the interactivity. This relationship has got to be as much fun as Facebook, or I quit.
Love,
Sasha
Open relationships do have their benefits...dare I suggest a tangle in the hammock with tumblr.com to satisfy that visual craving?
Nevr hrd of tumblr befr....I am srly tempted. If I don't see you fr anothr month, you'll know why.
Sasha-
I too am guilty of blogging about my love for Facebook and the joys of its noncommittal quickies. Alas, torn between two interfaces...
xoxo
And do you Twitter, too? Did you see how those who were twittering in China reported on the earthquake minutes, if not hours, before the official news reporters learned of the disaster? Twittering has its advantages, offering more temptation to those of us who like to chat and write.
Sasha,
Even though I am one of your fellow bloggers, I tend to be a lurker online, even on this blog: always reading, rarely commenting. On Facebook, too! But I do read each of your posts with great anticipation. I'm finding, as All Things Internet takes over our days, that I am lurking ever so much more than I used to -- perhaps because I have so many blogs to read? (And I do have my work blog to write, which I feel bound to because of the whole paycheck thing.) That giddy sense of community that I used to feel when I first got into the Facebook mode has flattened for me a little. I think what I'm going to try to do is do a little less surfing and a little more interacting.
By the way, I think it's GREAT news that USC is starting an arts journalism master's. You are a star for helping make it happen!
Your faithful reader,
D.
Donald, that's interesting because perhaps most journalists now do have to write a work blog, and that exerts a similar demand to a column. Its appetite is voracious, no? Therefore, when it comes to non-work blogging (and I know you have your own "personal" blog to upkeep), you are apt to be judicious and sparing. Thus you have, if I am reading you and this information correctly, introduced the idea of three different kinds of blogging. And where there are three, there are probably three more.
In addition, you are saying that the thrill of Facebook and quick back-and-forths wear thin eventually, at least for you. I can see how that would happen. But when you say you seek less to surf than to interact these days, what do you mean by "interact"? Real, physical, actual interaction? Or what? I am curious.
Thanks for your insight as a blogging/Facebooking/print old timer!
Yours,
Sasha
Sasha, regarding less surfing and more interaction: I want to make a conscious effort to get a little more involved (in terms of comments, postings) in the blogs/sites I do read rather than feel this need to skim so much stuff. So I guess what that means is cutting back on the number of blogs I glance at and spending a little more time on the ones that really interest me.
As far as Facebook goes: I am trying to figure out why I became so anti-Facebook in the past couple of months. I used to love it: I'd update my page daily (including the arcane details of daily life), play Scrabble with people, do all the cutesy stuff like take the quizzes and send people virtual cocktails, etc. And then, one day, I found the whole thing to be incredibly dreary. I'd even recruited some friends to join, and they ended up pestering me why I wasn't being more involved. It's probably a combination of things: that I got tired of all the little gimmicky applications, that I didn't have that much to say to some people (especially the ones who were more along the lines of casual Christmas card acquaintances), that I just ran out of time. The other day I was at a restaurant (yes, I was hanging out in an actual physical establishment and not a virtual one) and overheard two friends talking. One said, "If I have one more high school classmate that I can barely remember contact me through Facebook, I'm going to ditch the whole thing."
This is why I am absolutely contrarian when it comes to Facebook as a potent social force/investment opportunity. I think people are fickle. Things can go in and out of fashion so quickly online. Today's big deal can become tomorrow's Friendster.com.