Why I Blog—Part I

Today marks my six-month blogging anniversary—a fitting moment to reconsider what lured me into this demanding pursuit—a somewhat unconventional and inconvenient genre for a tradition-bound journalist.
What started me thinking about this was not my anniversary, but this recent NY Times piece by Byron Calame, the paper’s public editor.
In roundhousing Linda Greenhouse, who is the Times’ veteran Supreme Court correspondent, Calame added this snide aside about blogging: “Postings of personal opinions on blogs beyond the Times, unrestrained by self-discipline, are easy for critics to find and fashion into a dossier attacking the credibility of the reporter.”
In flogging blogs, Calame joined the ranks of other distinguished media critics: Nicholas Lehmann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, in The New Yorker; and Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page, who on Apr. 21 wrote an anti-blog screed for that page (to which I’m not permitted to link).
Greenhouse got reprimanded by Calame for public punditry after pummeling the Bush administration’s policies and practices in a speech delivered to fellow Harvard/Radcliffe alums. Who can blame seasoned writers like Greenhouse, who have seen and understood so much, for longing to express long-suppressed views, informed by their accumulated wisdom?
Which is why, almost six months ago, I started this blog. But now that I’ve shed my self-effacing cultural journalist’s persona for my feisty alter ego, CultureGrrl, there’s no going back: I can never again pretend to be a dispassionate observer when I interview sources on topics about which I’ve expressed strong views (and neither can Greenhouse). It doesn’t matter that I’ve held opinions all my life and that I am still capable of straightforward reportage. What matters is that I am now perceived by both sources and readers as biased on hot-button topics. That may compromise my credibility as a fair and accurate reporter.
That’s okay with me. I feel ripe to mature from chronicler to interpreter. I still exercise strong journalistic chops, but now I apply them to buttressing my opinions and to influencing the opinions of others.
COMING NEXT: What CultureGrrl can do that Rosenbaum can’t.