Reading Obama

Reading Obama
The Tyee has published my article Reading Obama, a review of his book The Audacity of Hope. It should have some interest for webwriters, whatever their politics.

The Tyee has published my article Reading Obama, a review of his book The Audacity of Hope. It should have some interest for webwriters, whatever their politics.

More spring cleaning
In Webwriting Resources, over on the left, I've removed some sites that hadn't been updated in several months. Other old sites are still there. Even though inactive, they offer some useful materials. It's striking to see that most of the sites are lively and very up to date. If you're running a site of interest to webwriters, and you're not on the list, drop me a line.

In Webwriting Resources, over on the left, I've removed some sites that hadn't been updated in several months. Other old sites are still there. Even though inactive, they offer some useful materials.

It's striking to see that most of the sites are lively and very up to date. If you're running a site of interest to webwriters, and you're not on the list, drop me a line.

Not quite getting it
Via The New York Review of Books, an attempt to explain Blogs. It's a long article, mentioning ten books about blogging, but this is the author's key misunderstanding: Bloggers assume that if you're reading them, you're one of their friends, or at least in on the gossip, the joke, or the names they drop. They often begin their posts mid-thought or mid-rant—in medias craze. They don't care if they leave...

Via The New York Review of Books, an attempt to explain Blogs. It's a long article, mentioning ten books about blogging, but this is the author's key misunderstanding:

Bloggers assume that if you're reading them, you're one of their friends, or at least in on the gossip, the joke, or the names they drop.

They often begin their posts mid-thought or mid-rant—in medias craze. They don't care if they leave you in the dust. They're not responsible for your education.

Bloggers, as Mark Liberman, one of the founders of the blog called Language Log, once noted, are like Plato. :-) The unspoken message is: Hey, I'm here talking with my buddies. Keep up with me or don't. It's up to you.

Much of the article is a calm, patient explanation of what blogs are, intending for people who sincerely don't know. Both the quote above and that calm, patient explanation seem to me serious misunderstanding about writing for the web.

The review, Sarah Boxer, assumes that her readers need this background about blogging because they don't know anything about it. She assumes that bloggers don't provide this background because they've all already got it.

For some teenage blogger writing for an audience of six or seven, the background may indeed be there. But for anyone trying to gather and disseminate serious information through a blog, the background is always doubtful.

On my blog Writing Fiction, I see that a striking number of my visitors arrive on the site after googling "How many pages in a novel?" Whether or not they've written a novel, that question means they're novice novelists. They lack the exformation of more experienced writers.

Similarly, people visit my bird flu blog, H5N1, with wildly different levels of knowledge about the subject. Some are officials with the World Health Organization, others are epidemiologists, and most know nothing at all except that bird flu is supposed to be bad.

Apart from assuming a basic level of English reading ability, I don't expect anything from my readers. For both blogs I have to find some way to bring the newcomers up to speed without boring the experienced visitors. I really do feel responsible for my readers' education, and I don't want to turn anyone away.

So on H5N1 I provide an introductory page, showing the new visitor what's on the site. Currently, I'm also providing definitions of Indian words like lakh, crore, and panchayat, because they keep turning up in Indian newspapers' reports on bird flu.

On Writing Fiction, I keep responding to comments to the "How Many Pages" post, which I originally made three long years ago. I also provide a link to Write a Novel, a self-guided online course containing the basic materials now lost in the archives of Writing Fiction. (Look for it in the Writers' Resources list.)

Some blogs, like some graduate courses, can assume a cozy familiarity with little-known material. Shared exformation creates an intimate atmosphere, a feeling of belonging that newcomers may not share. If anything, they'll feel deliberately excluded.

But most webwriters, whether serious amateurs or professionals, can't afford to think about the happy few who share our private jokes and roomed with us in college. We have to reach as many people as possible, and to provide something useful for each of them.

So we have to write in simple, clear language. We have to format our material for easy navigation and response. We have to think about our visitors' needs, not our own egos. That, it seems to me, is the exformation that Sarah Boxer doesn't yet have.

The Branding of Barack Obama
Here's a fascinating article in Newsweek that web writers and editors should ponder: Why the Obama "Brand" Is Working. It's an interview with designer Michael Bierut. Excerpt: How else is Obama's design different than what has come before--or what rival campaigns are doing? He's the first candidate, actually, who's had a coherent, top-to-bottom, 360-degree system at work. Whereas, I think it's more more common for politicians to have a bumper-sticker...

Here's a fascinating article in Newsweek that web writers and editors should ponder: Why the Obama "Brand" Is Working. It's an interview with designer Michael Bierut. Excerpt:

How else is Obama's design different than what has come before--or what rival campaigns are doing?

He's the first candidate, actually, who's had a coherent, top-to-bottom, 360-degree system at work. Whereas, I think it's more more common for politicians to have a bumper-sticker symbol that they just stick on everything and hope that that will carry the day.

The thing that sort of flabbergasts me as a professional graphic designer is that, somewhere along the way, they decided that all their graphics would basically be done in the same typeface, which is this typeface called Gotham.

If you look at one of his rallies, every single non-handmade sign is in that font. Every single one of them. And they're all perfectly spaced and perfectly arranged.

Trust me. I've done graphics for events --and I know what it takes to have rally after rally without someone saying, "Oh, we ran out of signs, let's do a batch in Arial." It just doesn't seem to happen. There's an absolute level of control that I have trouble achieving with my corporate clients.

Then if you go to the Web site, it's all reflected there too--all the same elements showing up in this clean, smooth, elegant way. It all ties together really, really beautifully as a system. 

Is Obama's stuff on the level with the best commercial brand design?

I think it's just as good or better. I have sophisticated clients who pay me and other people well to try to keep them on the straight and narrow, and they have trouble getting everything set in the same typeface. And he seems to be able to do it in Cleveland and Cincinnati and Houston and San Antonio. Every time you look, all those signs are perfect.

Graphic designers like me don't understand how it's happening. It's unprecedented and inconceivable to us. The people in the know are flabbergasted.

Meanwhile, over at Salon, we get an intriguing analysis of the candidates' logos.

Link popularity and tools for link building
Link popularity and link quality are important because all search engines consider them as a part of their ranking algorithms, says Puneet Mehrotra ..