Personal,  Theology/Bible

Understanding the Blogs

In his daily blog on OpinionJournal.com, James Taranto brings our attention to a useful little essay by Steven Den Beste. In the essay, Den Beste says that all blogs fall into one of two basic categories. He writes:

“Blogs are as different as the people who write them, but you’ll find two fundamental themes, with each blog being somewhere on the axis of how much of each appears. For lack of better terms, I suppose you could refer to them as ‘editors’ and ‘writers’.

“One form of blog is the ‘informal portal’. The general idea is to find cool stuff, link to it, and perhaps add a few words describing it. The link is the point; the words are there to encapsulate and sell the link. These people are organizers, searchers, they’re the web’s editors. They become popular to the extent that their readers like their judgment.

“The other theme is writing. The idea is to actually create something new and add it to the collective data stream. There may be a link involved or may not be, but it’s the writing which is the point. The subject matter may be critical or trivial; it may be driven by current events or by private experience or by the whim of the blogger. Sometimes a link is relevant; sometimes it inspires the writing. Sometimes no link is needed at all” (source).

One of my favorite ‘editor’ blogs of late is Justin Taylor’s Between Two Worlds. I guess I like his so much because we seem to have all the same interests: the Bible, Theology, and Politics. He is very well read, and I’m finding myself giving him hat tips more and more (I even learned the technical term “hat tip” from him!). Other notable editors that I like include the Drudge Report (of course) and Best of the Web.

Probably my favorite ‘writer’ blogger is Russell Moore, Academic Dean of Southern Seminary. He contributes almost daily at Touchstone Magazine’s “Mere Comments” blog and at The Henry Institute website. Another writer that I enjoy is R. Albert Mohler.

We might also mention Op-Ed “writers” whose printed work appears on the web. My favorite is Peggy Noonan on OpinionJournal.com. A good daily round-up of online Op-Eds appears on the Real Clear Politics website.

There are two staples that I have found very helpful in my daily news reading: “Today’s Headlines” in the New York Times and the “print edition” page of the Washington Post. You can pretty well predict the top stories on the morning news programs by reading these daily editions (especially the New York Times).

Well, this is a little bit of my daily diet. I hope it’s helpful to you.

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