Following Sullivan

I hope you enjoyed the Sullivan read, because we’ll keep returning to it.

What I like about the article, and what some of you noticed, is that Sullivan doesn’t simply celebrate blogging but tries to describe its hallmarks and to put it in relation to other forms of writing and journalism. Of blogging he writes, “Unlike any single piece of print journalism, its borders are extremely porous and its truth inherently transitory. The consequences of this for the act of writing are still sinking in.” Sullivan’s article may be read as an attempt to start coming to terms with those consequences. He views blogging as recognizing a more provisional idea of truth and as changing how readers and writers interact. He focuses on “friendship” as best representing the personal connection blogs encourage. I don’t think this is a quality restricted to blogs—the personal essay, which also has roots in the writings of Montaigne, has a similar human quality—but it does help distinguish blogs from more traditional forms of journalism.

Sullivan answers the question of why he blogs by recounting his introduction to the form, his experience with it, and the thrill and audience connection blogging allows. He explains blogging through a series of metaphors, including blogging as jazz, extreme sports, and blogger as disc jockey. He provides detailed consideration of audience participation in blogs and the depth and fact-checking that hyperlinks allow. Sullivan is a sophisticated thinker, but politics, not writing theory, is his primary site of investigation. In this piece Sullivan writes as an accomplished blogger and journalist. He is able to bring much of his personal experience to weigh on the topic. This makes for a balanced and more convincing read. The very fact that the discussion is printed in a long-form magazine piece, that Sullivan is not in this instance blogging about blogging, provides an example of how Sullivan sees blogs augmenting but not replacing other forms of writing.

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I want you all to notice some of the things that I did in this analysis, even basic things such as formatting. I’m not offering this as a perfect analysis—you’re entitled to your own supported reading of Sullivan—but it does provide some examples of what I think make for stronger reading responses.

Use quotes to give examples and support your reading. When you do, be sure to introduce and comment upon those quotes rather than just drop quotes in. Most of you integrated your quotes well. When you do quote, the period always go inside of the “quotation marks.” That’s MLA style. If you’re citing a source with a page number, the period follows the end “parenthesis” (#). And, if you’re using lengthy quotes, set them off from the rest of the text. In traditional academic papers a quote longer than four lines is set off with a line break and indentation. (We’ll go over this again before you write your extended essays.) You can follow whatever format you want for longer quotes in blog posts. Sullivan’s blog might serve as an example.

Finally, notice the different ways you can discuss a text. You can restate the main idea or key ideas as your understand them, point to what you most liked or disliked and why, find points of significance or interest, and outline agreements or disagreements. You can also look at not just what is written but how it is written, its form and execution. You can comment upon the value of the author’s project. You can introduce elements of rhetorical analysis—think author, audience, venue, purpose, etc. My main point here is that you can read for information and, at the same time, read as a writer who is looking at how other writers write.

I’ll stop here. This is already longer than I expected, perhaps a bit too much with the flair.

Enjoy your Labor Day weekend.