Musings on blogging

Our story so far

Having changed the nature of this blog, eliminating the Grinwout’s blog and letting the G fb page go dormant, I probably need to stop and think about things for a minute.

Hmmmmm.

First of all, why do I do any of this? Because I like doing it. That’s good enough reason, I think. I entertain myself. Nothing wrong with that.

CL has always had a fairly decent following, considering its parochial nature. Until recently, it has been mostly about high school debate, with a little digression now and then, more often than not during the off season. I certainly wasn’t getting every person in the high school debate universe reading it, but I was getting a good enough number to warrant continuing it. The odd thing was, when I’d run into people from Timbuktu and mention something about my life, they’d respond that they already knew that because they had read it on the blog. That always surprises me. It’s one thing to have readers: after all, my DJ is publishing. It’s another thing to run into these readers in person. I like to think that between CL and TVFT, we get some serious ideas out there about how our activity is going, and more importantly, that the activity is part of a dialectic process that keeps it moving (although not necessarily toward some teleological abstract good), and that I am involved in that process in a meaningful way. That a few people have demonized me is pretty good evidence for my success; that other people have lately become greater demons is pretty good evidence for the fickleness of demonizing. I thought I was the End of Debate as We Know It. I hate finding out that it used to be me, and now it’s some other people altogether. Curiously enough, debate goes on despite any of us.

My problem, as far as blogging is concerned, is that I want to talk about more than forensics. I sort of believe that the things I want to talk about, even if they’re not directly related to forensics, are the sorts of things forensicians tend to be interested in, i.e., books and movies and music and the like. Of course, there are some who are not at all interested in what I have to say about these subjects, and want just debate stuff. And there are probably those who, after they’re no longer actively debating, might still be interested in the non-debate stuff while debate stuff per se is no longer of interest. I realize that by putting everything in one place I risk alienating one group or the other (which is why, lately, I’ve been putting “Forensics” in post titles concentrating on forensics issues.).

But here’s the thing. Since I’ve put everything in one place, and added a Twitter echo chamber to promote, I’ve pretty much tripled the readership. When things were separate, the parts did not add up to this total. So I guess everything in one place, however discordant the array may appear, does do the job better than anything else I’ve tried. I’m not saying that there’s not a better way, but it’s none of the ways I was doing things so far.

So, unless I come up with something even better, I’ll keep doing things this way for a while. I have a few ideas for further promotion of the material, but not enough to cause myself physical harm. But mostly I’m not going to change anything substantive for the foreseeable future. More to the point, I’m not going to think about it much, because I’ve concluded that this is working. In other words, going forward there will be tweaks, but not much else.

It will be interesting to see what happens when we roll back into debate season. I’ve already started a few balls rolling in that direction, or seen others do so. Time is cheap and available in the summer. Who knows where the winter will take us?

UPDATE: Curiously enough, after I wrote this and before I posted it, CP, who doesn't like it as is, suggested we try something different. Maybe a new approach will come after all. Stay tuned.
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