Notes to New Bloggers

Via Atrios is this link to letters to new bloggers from The Road to Surfdom. In the style of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Tim Dunlop offers good advice to the novice blogger, to which I admit to being one.

So should you start a blog? No blogger, I think, is ever going to tell you not to start a blog. Apart from being incredibly hypocritical for them to do so there are two other points worth noting. First is, at some level, everybody who has got into what we might call 'political blogging' has some sort of basic belief in the desirability of public discussion. No matter how cynical they might seem about the usefulness of internecine debate they obviously think there is something good in it.

Second, there is also a bit of self-interest involved in that bloggers are always looking for a chance to get more hits to their site. By encouraging others like you, they expect, at least initially, reciprocal links and friendly references which might hold them in good stead should you happen to turn out to be the "next big blog". Strangely, you are not seen as competition for a finite number of hits, but a catalyst for the creation of new hits.

To all and sundry with an interest in blogging as an activity, I commend the entire posting.