Malcom's Blog: Gone in a Blink

I am an enormous fan of Malcolm Gladwell.  It's not the enormous popularity of his two books, nor is it that he gets paid $40 K to spend 45 minutes talking from a stage. It's the quality of his story-telling, live, in books, in the New Yorker and I had thought it would be true in blogs as well.

Malcolm's last post was this one on June 21. Then he seems to have just tiptoed softly out of the blogosphere.  It is not a bad read, neither are the sparse ledger of his previous entries. But they all read a bit more like magazine articles than blogs.  He never got quite personal and conversational.  Not really.

Because I am such a big fan of his, I was hoping for more. I anticipated reading early blogged drafts of his next book for example. Perhaps he'll come back and do this.

Perhaps not.

Comments

[Doug Karr]

Shel, I don't believe he has... here's one from 8/7:

http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/08/the_case_for_ge.html

[shel israel]

Doug,
I'll be darned. It wasn't there when I looked before. I can either blame this on user error or on Windows. But an erroneous blog laid, is an eroneous blog played and I'll let my mistake stand.

[Don Spencer]

Doug's right. Malcolm is still writing, although not as frequently as I would prefer.

One thing Malcolm has mentioned in his recent blogs, though, might indicate that he would stop writing is his view that blogging is derivative in nature. I suppose all he really means is that blogging "tends" to be derivative, but isn't necessarily so. Certainly his posts don't strike me as derivative.

[Doug Karr]

Don makes a good point. We're seeing it here in Indy as well, where the Editor of the local newspaper has commented on blogs negatively a few times. Unfortunately, journalists in mass mediums like newspapers and televisions have forgotten that they are experts on reporting... but not the experts themselves. Blogging brings expertise directly to the reader, without the interpretation of the journalist in between. Though the quality of the penmanship may not be up to snuff with a Malcolm Gladwell, in the last few years, I've stopped getting the newspaper and the Wall Street Journal and have begun looking to blogs more and more for my information. I have the right to determine whether or not that content is worthy or not by subscribing, unsubscribing, commenting, trackbacking, linking, etc.

What the ol' newspaper industry doesn't understand is that the blogosphere isn't a new medium, it's a new means of communicating. It's not one-way, it has infinite ways.

Hopefully, Gladwell and others will figure this out. We're here to stay! And we've got far more expertise and resources than any newspaper. We make our living off of our talent, not our living off of writing about other peoples' talents.

Regards,
Doug

[Ted Demopoulos]

Of course Malcolm, and I'm a big fan myself, may just be laying low and taking it easy for the summer.

I certainly am to some extent, and will be blogging more come fall. For example today, instead of blogging on my two blogs, I played with the kids, went for a looooong bike ride,then went swimming with said kids.

I'm online now, but have (seriously) set a 30 minute timer to not stay online for hours. Think I'll lay down and do some reading then

[Andrew Denny]

But do you expect to see something from Mr Gladwell every time you open the New Yorker as well?

At the root of it all you have to remember that blogging is just another form of publishing.

Sure, you can use it as we do, writing something daily for people to expect, like a newspaper, or weekly like a magazine. But when coupled with feeds it's a handy way of communicating with your audience when you are ready. They don't have to check your website to see if you've got something to say, just as they don't have to call in to Borders every month to see if you've published a book.

When I was at boarding school my teachers made me sit down and write to my parents every Sunday, whether I had something to say or not. I hated it. My parents expected it. Perhaps you are just being Malcolm Gladwell's teacher or dad!