Tom writes today that he’s bowing out of war blogging:
I think I’ve finally got the Iraq blogging out of my system. I wish I hadn’t allowed myself to get sucked into it. It’s not what people read my blog for. Readership seems to have evaporated. Emails and quotes have been conspicuously absent. I should have known better.
I can identify with Tom, because writing about politics, ‘debating’ with the warbloggers, and being a peaceblogger aren’t necessarily the focus of this weblog, either. My focus is on people connecting with other people, technology, philosophy, the environment, photography and writing. And sensuality, can’t forget sensuality.
And I have found that sensuality and war don’t mix. Sensuality and politics don’t mix. Sensuality and warbloggers don’t mix.
(There’s a pattern emerging here.)
So why do I do it? Why do I get into the debates, comment on the politics? The timing of Tom’s posting is serendipitous, because the posting I pulled earlier today touched on this. I salvaged a bit of it to repeat here:
Someone once asked me in an email if I think webloggers are journalists. I told her that webloggers aren’t journalists, we’re conduits; we don’t originate stories, we provide pipelines to new sources of information, ones that may be escoteric or obscure or unknown to the average person on the street. And these sources of information provide the news we don’t get from the mainstream press.
If the information is interesting our readers may discuss it with their family and at work, and this news finds its way, slowly, haltingly, gradually into the non-Net world. If there are enough pipelines joining the flow, it causes ripples and eventually even the mainstream press might take a reluctant interest.
Every once in a while I divert from my regularly scheduled programming to discuss a political topic, or to take on the warbloggers, as I’ve done this last week. I don’t do this because I really enjoy beating my head against a wall (‘it feels so good when I stop’), or because I expect to win the debate or to convince the warbloggers to see the error of their ways.
I do it because I’m laying a pipe.
I do it because I’m laying a pipe.