Why a Book About Blogging Fails

Why a Book About Blogging Fails
A few months ago I got a review copy of Blogwars, by David D. Perlmutter. Of course I was delighted, and I started to read it at once. Then I put it down. Today, facing a serious reading shortage, I picked it up again and made a real effort to get into it. It hadn't improved, but these stupid machines have taught me that we learn more from our mistakes...

A few months ago I got a review copy of Blogwars, by David D. Perlmutter. Of course I was delighted, and I started to read it at once.

Then I put it down.

Today, facing a serious reading shortage, I picked it up again and made a real effort to get into it. It hadn't improved, but these stupid machines have taught me that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes.

So what's wrong with a book by a highly successful writer and professor of journalism, on the subject of political blogs and their growing impact on American life?

Put briefly, it's a print-on-paper document that needs to be more like web text.

A major design problem
I can't blame Perlmutter for the design of his book, but design is a major problem. The body text appears in a reasonably legible serif font. But the paragraphs are absurdly long, and subheads appear rarely. When they do, they're cramped boldface, barely legible—with underlines.

Now, I've been telling my students since the mid-1990s that you don't underline boldface text. Robin Williams made that simple point in 1995 in The Mac is Not a Typewriter.

Worse yet, the book includes excerpts from blogs using vast swathes of sans serif text, much of it in italics (see pages 144-147 for a really bad example).

You can get away with sans serif in short paragraphs with short lines, but not in lines of 17 to 20 words—not on screen, and not on paper.

Much of Perlmutter's text offers some interesting observations on the effect of political blogging in the 2004 US presidential election. But by failing to exploit the style of effective web text, he effectively muffles himself and undercuts whatever he's trying to say about this medium.

How web text is changing print text
When I started to teach webwriting in the late 1990s, I tried to draw a distinction between the habits of print readers and those of online readers. As one who started reading print on paper in 1947, I'm very habituated to it indeed.

But Perlmutter's book has taught me that the web is actually changing all our reading habits. Short, concise web text, well laid out, has an impact we don't get over. When we go back to print on paper, we're too impatient to put up with long sentences and long paragraphs.

Some of my favourite political bloggers, like Glenn Greenwald, still haven't learned that. His posts are long, with endless paragraphs and tedious patches of italic quotations.

A blog like Power Line, whose politics I find regrettable, at least presents itself in short, well-designed paragraphs. (But Power Line should keep its text columns narrower, and use a serif font for body text.)

Greenwald is influential despite his print-oriented text. But he'd more influential if he turned his long-winded paragraphs into short, punchy statements.

Power Line doesn't persuade me, but at least I get its point in a hurry. And I recognize that its authors are trying to make their text readable.

I hope David Perlmutter does a new edition of Blogwars, preferably in time for the fall election. But I hope he gets an editor and a designer who know how to create a print analog of a website, so his readers will understand what he's trying to tell us.

A promising new search engine (updated)
I can still recall the day I first logged on to Google, then just the latest of a host of search engines. This morning I heard a news item about a new search engine: Cuil. After a very quick inspection, I'm impressed. It's fast and it's pretty—you get graphics as well as links. I'd welcome your comments about it and how well it meets your needs. Update, July 30: David...

I can still recall the day I first logged on to Google, then just the latest of a host of search engines. This morning I heard a news item about a new search engine: Cuil.

After a very quick inspection, I'm impressed. It's fast and it's pretty—you get graphics as well as links. I'd welcome your comments about it and how well it meets your needs.

Update, July 30: David Olive, a columnist for The Star in Toronto, is not impressed.

The New Online Omnivores
Last weekend I attended Northern Voice, a bloggers' conference in Vancouver. The Tyee has now published my comments on the event: The New Online Omnivores.

Last weekend I attended Northern Voice, a bloggers' conference in Vancouver. The Tyee has now published my comments on the event: The New Online Omnivores.

A Handy Reference
I recently ran across a useful little book, The Elements of Visual Style: The Basics of Print Design for Every PC and Mac User, by Robert W. Harris. While it's aimed at print-based writing, webwriters can also draw some lessons from it. Harris gives us a quick guide to typography, layout, and the use of art in print documents. The illustrations show bad and good examples, and the book itself...

I recently ran across a useful little book, The Elements of Visual Style: The Basics of Print Design for Every PC and Mac User, by Robert W. Harris. While it's aimed at print-based writing, webwriters can also draw some lessons from it.

Harris gives us a quick guide to typography, layout, and the use of art in print documents. The illustrations show bad and good examples, and the book itself is pretty well designed. I wish it were more "hypertextual": We get no references to other books on document design, and no links to sites dealing with this and related issues.

Still, it's a compact, concise, and inexpensive handbook. Even if you find most of the advice very familiar, the book could help you back up the points you're trying to make to your clients.

Clichés of Journalese
If you write for print or electronic media, some of these terms will make you wince, because you've probably used them: Journalese-English Dictionary (first edition). Most are British, and a little unfamiliar to North Americans, but we have plenty. Our public figures don't just promise to do something: they vow to do it. The cliché du jour (to use a cliché) in North America's blogosphere is "nuanced." Whether it's Obama,...

If you write for print or electronic media, some of these terms will make you wince, because you've probably used them: Journalese-English Dictionary (first edition).

Most are British, and a little unfamiliar to North Americans, but we have plenty. Our public figures don't just promise to do something: they vow to do it.

The cliché du jour (to use a cliché) in North America's blogosphere is "nuanced." Whether it's Obama, Clinton, or McCain, whatever they say is nuanced.

Nielsen on the Top Ten Application-Design Mistakes
Jakob Nielsen has a good Alertbox post: Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes. Nielsen generally makes good sense, but I wish he would update his own Alertbox site. His links are helpful, and the basic black-on-white layout is inviting. The summary at the top is a good idea. He keeps most of his paragraphs short. But the text stretches across the screen when it would be more readable and inviting in a narrower...

Jakob Nielsen has a good Alertbox post: Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes.

Nielsen generally makes good sense, but I wish he would update his own Alertbox site. His links are helpful, and the basic black-on-white layout is inviting. The summary at the top is a good idea. He keeps most of his paragraphs short.

But the text stretches across the screen when it would be more readable and inviting in a narrower column. An average of 10 to 12 words per line seems to work best for webtext.

As Nielsen himself has taught us, we look for boldface subheads as navigation guides. But he uses boldface in the body of his paragraphs, which is distracting...and when a boldface phrase shares the line with an underlined blue link and regular text, the result is pretty messy.

A US newspaper abandons print
Via Isthmus/The Daily Page: The end of an era in Madison, Wisconsin. Excerpt: Good luck, Cap Times. You'll need it. Converting from a six-day-a-week paid paper to an online news site is like jumping from a very high cliff into a very deep and mysterious pool. The paper might be killed. Or it might be transformed. One thing's for sure: The Capital Times that Madison has known for 90 years...

Via Isthmus/The Daily Page: The end of an era in Madison, Wisconsin. Excerpt:

Good luck, Cap Times. You'll need it. Converting from a six-day-a-week paid paper to an online news site is like jumping from a very high cliff into a very deep and mysterious pool.

The paper might be killed. Or it might be transformed.

One thing's for sure: The Capital Times that Madison has known for 90 years will be gone. Online publishing is a fundamentally different proposition for both journalists and readers. Experts consider it a classic disruptive technology that reorders daily life for just about everyone it touches and destroys what was thought to be a durable economic model for the eclipsed technology.

Newspapers won't die off as quickly as slide rules did when calculators were introduced, but the changes under way are so epochal you'd be foolish to believe anyone who speaks confidently of what publishing will be like in 10 years.

"Nobody knows anything," as veteran screenwriter William Goldman famously said of the secrets to successful movie-making. The newspaper business is even more in the dark as to how it will make its next buck.

Meanwhile, via the Editor & Publisher website: Steep Decline at NYT while WSJ gains. Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine also comments on the Madison metamorphosis.

A lot of journalists are becoming webwriters, but they don't necessarily like the idea, according to this post by Amy Gahran on Poynter.org. And a lot of webwriters, whether they know it or not, are becoming journalists.

The Politics of Cyberspace
The Tyee has published my article Winning Cyberspace in '08. Excerpt: ... the sudden advent of interactive media has changed propaganda into a two-way street, a conversation, a screaming match -- and a rock concert. One-way media and interactive media are themselves interacting, creating a political environment unlike any before it. The campaign of Barack Obama is not just thriving in this environment -- it's defining 21st-century campaign politics.

The Tyee has published my article Winning Cyberspace in '08. Excerpt:

... the sudden advent of interactive media has changed propaganda into a two-way street, a conversation, a screaming match -- and a rock concert. One-way media and interactive media are themselves interacting, creating a political environment unlike any before it.

The campaign of Barack Obama is not just thriving in this environment -- it's defining 21st-century campaign politics.

Mediated Cultures
Thanks to the colleague who sent me the link to this very interesting site: mediatedcultures.net @ kansas state university. It's a showcase of the "Digital Ethnography Working Group" at Kansas State University, and it offers some dramatic examples of web communication...especially the "Explorations of Mediated Culture" video. The links on the main page are worth exploring.

Thanks to the colleague who sent me the link to this very interesting site: mediatedcultures.net @ kansas state university.

It's a showcase of the "Digital Ethnography Working Group" at Kansas State University, and it offers some dramatic examples of web communication...especially the "Explorations of Mediated Culture" video. The links on the main page are worth exploring.

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.

Avoid cliché like the plague? Never
Robert Fisk is best known as a journalist specializing in the Middle East. But today he turns his attention to another chronic problem. Via The Independent: Avoid cliché like the plague? Never. Excerpt: Opposite my apartment in Beirut there used to live an American-born English teacher called Marion Lanson. When she departed Lebanon, I inherited her 1949 Random House American College Dictionary, edited by one Clarence L Barnhart "with the...

Robert Fisk is best known as a journalist specializing in the Middle East. But today he turns his attention to another chronic problem. Via The Independent: Avoid cliché like the plague? Never. Excerpt:

Opposite my apartment in Beirut there used to live an American-born English teacher called Marion Lanson. When she departed Lebanon, I inherited her 1949 Random House American College Dictionary, edited by one Clarence L Barnhart "with the Assistance of 355 Authorities and Specialists". I like "authorities" and "specialists" very much because we have largely abandoned such words.

I was keen to look up Mr Barnhart's definition of that plague of modern journalism, the cliché. "A trite, stereotyped expression, idea, practice, etc, as 'sadder but wiser', 'strong as an ox'."

Alas, I fear these are imaginative expressions compared with the stuff we now consume. Mr. Barnhart's German translation of cliché – "klitsch" or "doughy mass" – seems more appropriate for the assaults on literacy that we commit today.

All this came to mind when I learned this week of the coup in Mauretania, where the army took power after President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi unwisely tried to fire some of his senior officers.

Would tanks "roll" into the capital, I asked myself? Tanks always "roll", don't they? I have never actually seen a tank perform this extraordinary act but, clichés being what they are, my eye sped down the Mauretania story for my friendly "roll". And sure enough – perhaps because Mauretania doesn't have a lot of tanks – there it was. The president, said the agency report, "was arrested after military convoys rolled through the capital Nouakchott".

Why do we use these dead words? There is a dictionary of clichés on my desktop in Beirut and I heartily recommend Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words by the Australian Don Watson.

It contains one of my most hated clichés: core. As in "core issues", "core business" or "core learning outcomes". Rather like "key speakers" – of which I always refuse to be a member – these clichés attempt to smother idiocy with deep learning (or "core" learning, perhaps).

What is this fascination with stale language? Let me rage. I hate all reports about wars where "the guns fall silent"; the retirement period for artillery being rather short, it's only a matter of time before the "clouds of war" begin to gather once more, when opponents are "pitted" against each other, when guns "soften up" their targets, and national governments complain about "terrorists" crossing (ergo: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan) "porous borders". In Iraq, we may experience a "spike" of violence, followed – of course – by a successful "surge".

By all means read the whole thing.

US Democrats waging web war
Via Netcraft: Clinton and Obama XSS battle develops. Excerpt: Following the recent cross-site scripting attacks against Barack Obama's website, Finnish security researcher Harry Sintonen has published an example of a cross-site scripting vulnerability on votehillary.org. Sintonen's example submits a POST request to the Vote Hillary website and injects an iframe, causing the site to display the contents of Barack Obama's website. Unlike the Obama incident, which redirected the user's web...

Via Netcraft: Clinton and Obama XSS battle develops. Excerpt:

Following the recent cross-site scripting attacks against Barack Obama's website, Finnish security researcher Harry Sintonen has published an example of a cross-site scripting vulnerability on votehillary.org.

Sintonen's example submits a POST request to the Vote Hillary website and injects an iframe, causing the site to display the contents of Barack Obama's website. Unlike the Obama incident, which redirected the user's web browser, Sintonen's method retains the votehillary.org URL in the address bar while displaying the opposing website.

Sintonen told Netcraft that he was inspired by the recent Obama attacks and first examined Hillary Clinton's official website at www.hillaryclinton.com. Sintonen did not find any cross-site scripting vulnerabilities on this site, adding that it looked quite secure, but subsequently found XSS opportunities available on the Vote Hillary website. Sintonen lives in Finland and has no strong interest in US politics.

While the example exploits have so far been relatively benign (limited to redirecting a user to the opponent's website, for example), future cross-site scripting vulnerabilities found on political candidate sites have plenty of scope to be much more serious. Obama's and Clinton's websites both accept monetary contributions towards their campaigns, so cross-site scripting vulnerabilities could be leveraged to steal money and identities from supporters.

Read the post on the Netcraft site to follow the links.

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.