Summary: I mull over the recommendation that blog entries be short. In 'short', a long entry can be useful to both writer and some readers. There's room for, even a need for, longer entries as well as the short.
I address this issue for both personal and theoretical reasons. Personally I've found myself feeling constrained by the notion of "short and pithy" while I've been exploring several ethical themes over recent months. In the nearly two years that I've been a blogger I've explored multiple avenues of thought, and, as my comfort and sense of competence/investment has grown have tackled bigger thought projects. My weblogging practice has developed to the point that I now have to segment my broad objectives into smaller pieces that can be addressed in separate and, yes, longer blog entries. Each is meant to stand sufficiently on its own legs to be a separate entry but to be also a piece of an mental map for response to a broader question.
See, for example, my Distributive justice related entries (from most recent) as well (plus links to Corning,Deutsch, and Rawls materials.)
- A Just Teacher Pay System (3): How Does it Compare
- A Just Teacher Pay System (2): Fair Shares. In which I explain my application of Peter Corning's Fair Shares system to teacher compensation packages. ( (:o[> link being a problem... it will show up as my weblog entry for January 25, 2004.)
- Justice for Teachers In which I introduce two teachers with no difference in pay, or background, or training, or load, or student population served. However, one is clearly more effective in nurturing meaningful student achievement. Is this just?
- Justice: A fair distribution of goods and harms (3). Implementation . In this piece I use Deutsch's distributive justice questions to examine typical teacher compensation approaches.
- Justice: A fair distribution of goods and harms (2). Bio-logic. I discuss Peter Corning's Fair Shares approach to the distribution of 'goods'.
- Justice: A fair distribution of goods and harms (1) John Rawls' approach to defining justice is outlined.
- See my full teacher justice story for a more comprehensive treatment. (I decided it was too long for a weblog entry-- plus it needed a little more 'fire' --personality. Thus the sequence of shorter entries [today's entry being the third].)
- See also Corning, Peter A. , In Press, "Fair Shares: Beyond Capitalism and Socialism. The Biological Basis of Social Justice", in Politics and the Life Sciences) (Click here for a pdf copy of the document and here to see his "Complex Systems" website).
- Deutsch, Morton (1978), Distributive Justice, Yale University Press, pp 2-4.
While I have been writing these entries I knew that, at least for the sake of my personal beliefs and understandings, that I was building a useful assembly of thoughts; at the same time, there lurked an "excessive length" guilt. Until, that is, I read Lawrence Isolum's (Legal Theory Blog) bookclub entry on Lawrence Lessig's new, downloadable book, Free Culture. (Legal Theory Bookclub: Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig). In this series Isolum unpacks a complex set of ideas (Lessig's on copyright uses, abuses vs. the public good) He is doing it in serial form, the sequence reflecting subtantive development of the chapters, and, yes, the entries are long. However, I had no trouble or quibble with the length. I was interested in the topic and able to follow his clearly rendered summary of Lessig's rhetorical "moves" (And somehow, the full-blown profit from his series of long entries kicked my "guilt" down the basement stairs. The long piece, I then-and-there concluded, has an equal place at the table of essay styles.)
I think it's a matter of the reader's interests. If a reader wants to keep a current glossary of Radio Userland tools, for example, entries that give "name, rank and serial number" then the shorter entry would be to her or his taste.
In the case of this reader , yours truly, however, my preferences in areas of deepest interest require deep reading and, as a consequence, deep, multilayered, writing from authors I've chosen to learn from. In short, I tend to read those who grab aholt of big topics and shake them thoroughly. The shaking of big mental objects takes more words.
Here is a sampling from among my favorite "long entry" weblogs [some will parce a long piece out, others will dig in with each entry, all will have the occasional short entry]:
- Flemming Funch's Ming The Mechanic Flemming has a multilayered background and investment; happily, the complexity is reflected in his blog writing.
- Ton Zylstra's Ton's Interdependent Thoughts constantly flavors the knowledge management, and knowledge manager, values and theory pool. Thoroughly enjoyable and at the same time thoughtful.
- Lilia Efimova's Mathemagenic weblog has been an exemplary connecting weblog and one in which she progressively analyzes the intrapersonal processes of weblogging.
- Dave Pollard's How to Save The World (as a sampling of his style see this entry)
- Timothy Wilkens'Synearth sitesreflect his broad commitment to realizing the liberal human-centered agenda with complex, virtuous thought,networks and applications of cybernetic goals. No way are short pieces going to work here.
- Lawrence Isolum's Legal Theory Blog
- Steve Hannaford's Oligopoly Watch shows a deep philosophical and economic understanding, plus values both of which allow us to track normally inaccessible corporate motives through his entries
- Sebastien Fiedler's Sebloggingreflects a deep investment in constructivist education processes themselves and as they may be influenced by various web activities for students. Again, depth is necessary.
- Will Richardson's weblogg-ed. Will has taken on the topic of weblogging in the schools and has a large network of fellow conspirators. Yet rather than running a self congratulatory network of the converted he demonstrates by example his deep investment in what is true. See, for example, his very recent reflections on just what is involved in student blogging.
- Stephen Down's Stephen's Web (Stephen's site includes a news aggregator, news blurbs and longer entries)
- James D McDonald's Series on writing{fiction}via Jim McGee (this is one I look forward to reading--because of its 'depth' focus)
If my strategic focus were upon drawing the largest possible audience I would have to write shorter pieces for the sake of audience gain, or so I have heard. My primary strategic purpose, however, is the development of useful, communicable, integrated understanding in several areas of thought. If I do this, my thought re audience is, as in Field of Dreams, "Build it and they will come!". [see Piers Young's Monkey Magic's response and related ideas here]