Reading Review for

“Why I Blog” by Andrew Sullivan

Atlantic Monthly MagazineNovember 2008

Sullivan on “Why I Blog”

“Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.”

Sullivan on “Why I Blog”

“…a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one.”

Sullivan on “Why I Blog”

“Unlike newspapers, which would eventually publish corrections… far from the original error, bloggers had to walk the walk of self-correction in the same space and in the same format as the original screw-up.”

Sullivan on “Why I Blog”

“The role of a blogger… is similar in this way to the host of a dinner party. [S]he can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate.”

Sullivan on “Why I Blog”

“The blogger can get away with less and afford fewer pretensions of authority…the panic that can paralyze a writer…is not available. You can’t have blogger’s block.”

Sullivan on “Why I Blog”

“The links not only drive conversation, they drive readers. The more you link, the more others will link to you, and the more traffic and readers you will get.”

Sullivan on “Why I Blog”

“The form is more accountable, not less, because there is nothing more conducive to professionalism than being publicly humiliated for sloppiness.”

Sullivan on “Why I Blog”

“…the blogosphere, at its best, a conversation, rather than a production.”