As of today, Twenty-Four/Seven is moving to a blog format.
Why, oh why, you may ask. And well you should, although maybe not as whiny. You deserve some straight answers, I think as a reader of Twenty-Four/Seven you’ve come to expect them, and they’ll help fill up my blog.
1. No deadline. My weekly deadline for Wednesday publication has previously been “sometime Tuesday” and I have maintained that rigid discipline except for when I haven’t. But “sometime” has been getting later and later, until I’ve been seen sneaking into the building at 11:59 p.m. to slide hastily scrawled copy under the office door. Now, at last, I am blessedly free of that crushing pressure.
Of course, since I prefer blogs that update regularly, I’ve just traded my weekly deadline for a constant and never-ending one that demands attention every hour of the day until I can no longer hear of an event, no matter how inconsequential, without obsessively typing it out even if there is no keyboard in front of me.
2. I can fit in stuff that doesn’t match my topic that week. This happens a lot. I’ll be finishing up a nice piece on how the RIAA is tagging and releasing music pirates back into the wild for study and suddenly something Paris Hiltony will happen, and I have to watch the other bloggers just jump all over it and wallow. I hate missing out on a good wallow. There’s just too many weird, inane, inexplicable, cool, bizarre, absurd, disturbing, and strange things out there for me to wait that long to laugh about them in public. Expect blog posts at all hours of the day, weekends, whenever. Or maybe you shouldn’t expect them, because as a former columnist I am extremely lazy. It is the way of my people.
3. Columns are so last century. When you think of columnists you think of guys in old jackets with leather elbow patches, hunched over a battered wooden desk, pen clutched in a cramped hand in the freezing cold. Or am I thinking of Bob Cratchitt? Doesn’t matter, the point is blogging is now, it’s hip, it’s the new thing. Or, rather, it was the new thing three years ago, but this is about right for my learning curve. Look for my podcast to begin sometime in 2011, when everyone else is moving to direct braincasts.
4. Comments! Now everyone can share in your opinions of my work and I can test the waters of my readership and let them guide me into new discoveries until they run me ashore into the pop culture shoals and I am forced to find a new metaphor. Anyway, I’m opening up comments so everyone can see what everyone else thinks. What could possibly go wrong?
5. I am now part of the blogosphere, and it is an awesome feeling. Suddenly I feel like spreading half-formed gossip or recklessly reporting on something scandalous I haven’t bothered to verify. Also, it’s kinda tingly. Farewell, Main Stream MediaTM!
6. I can include pictures. I could before, but it was a trickier process that involved other people having to put them in for me. Also, other people are way more judgmental about my appearance than I am, I’ve noticed. I mean, they’re all “look at me, I have ‘taste’ and ‘hygiene’ and ‘symmetrical body parts,’ lah dee dah.” Elitists.
7. I can still do longish rants – such as this – along with the short blurbs and links, so sometimes my blog may resemble a column on the surface. Ask your doctor.
8. It’s searchable! For those times when you desperately need to know where to find my column on hibachi deaths and Google is being uncooperative, your prayers have been answered. Your creepy, creepy prayers. Also, you can skim by category.
9. “Blogger” just sounds better than “columnist.” Would you rather be someone who blogs or someone who columns? How do you column, anyway?
10. I hear that anybody who’s anybody blogs, and I’ve always wanted to be anybody.
So welcome to the new incarnation of Twenty-Four/Seven. Feel free to let me know what you think, and check back.
Too bad. Your COLUMN has been my favorite thing about the DBNJ since you started doing it.
🙁
Reason XXIVCMVI: My office filter no longer picks this up as a dangerous time consuming new source. It allows dangerous time consuming brain candy, so I get my fix.
Hooray! I can finally add you to my RSS aggregator! Oh, and welcome to the blogosphere. 🙂
Now I just need to figure out how to get an RSS feed right to livejournal. 🙂
The LiveJournal syndication feed is 247_feed.
Chris, I already said it but whatever, I love you, in a very platonic way.