BLOGGING LIKE GRAFFITI? Apropos of discussions about old-style journalists’ “delicacy” when faced with criticisms from the blogosphere, comes this curious analogy in Lauren Collins‘ riveting New Yorker article on Banksy, the elusive (and rather progressive!) British graffiti artist:
The graffitist’s impulse is akin to a blogger’s: write some stuff, quickly, which people may or may not read. Both mediums demand wit and nimbleness. They arouse many of the same fears about the lowering of the public discourse and the taking of undeserved liberties.
This accurately reflects the fears I’ve heard again and again from print journalists. But notwithstanding the alacrity both mediums require, the characterization doesn’t seem quite right. I’m as nonplussed by graffiti as the next kid born in the 1980s, but it remains the case that according to the letter of the law, graffiti artists are vandalizing public and private property. Bloggers, on the other hand, don’t take up any space intended for other purposes. We take advantage of an entirely new space without denying any old-style journalists or pundits the right to speak. And many of us, of course, occupy a middle-ground between full-time blogging and reporting, analysis, and opinion writing for more mainstream outlets. So we’re as invested as other journalists in the continued vibrancy of print culture.
A better analogy between bloggers and graffiti artists would be if we bloggers had defaced en masse newsstand copies of major papers and magazines in March 2003, writing “LIES LIES LIES” in black magic marker. Of course, that’s hardly what bloggers do. We’re far more effective than that.
—Dana Goldstein
