Are Bloggers Writers? The Debate Across the Blogosphere

13 Jul
2010


I love this ques­tion. I really do. Do you know who nor­mally asks this? Writers. I’m talk­ing about writ­ers with dog eared dic­tio­nar­ies and Moleskins full of future arti­cle ideas or story plots.

I mean writ­ers who spent good money at a uni­ver­sity get­ting a degree that offi­cially gave them the right to call them­selves “writ­ers”.

They are now see­ing blog­gers come in and take the food out of their prover­bial mouth’s and they don’t like it.

Honestly, I don’t blame them. I would feel like an employee who was laid off because his com­pany would rather pay a teenager to do his job. Like a super­model who is feel­ing a lot less super because actresses are tak­ing all the Vogue cov­ers. It’s not fair.

Life isn’t fair so let’s get pass that.

Here’s the real­ity: Blogging has sur­passed the fad stage. It’s not going any­where.

Remember back in the day when every­one from Grandma to the fam­ily dog signed up for a blog but quickly lost inter­est? Yeah, nei­ther do I.

That time is now. Nobody truly lost inter­est. The fam­ily dog is final­iz­ing his post as we speak. That’s because ever since blogs appeared on the fledg­ling social media blue­print they cemented their place in the inter­net world.

All of us wannabe’s who dreamed of hav­ing actual peo­ple read what we wrote sali­vated to get our spot in what we con­sid­ered the new lit­er­ary land­scape. As we scram­bled, the brow of the sea­soned writer fur­rowed. Recognition reg­is­tered that this new media was going to affect them.

So that brings about the ques­tion are blog­gers writ­ers?

The sim­ple answer: No. ALL blog­gers are not writ­ers.

I don’t mean any dis­re­spect when I say that because some blog­gers don’t even con­sider them­selves writ­ers. They just like to have a place to express them­selves or talk about what they like. Like Cats. Named Sebastian.

There’s noth­ing wrong with that. That’s one of the great things about blog­ging. You don’t even really have to have a point or a coher­ent thought to have a blog. Just inter­net access.

On the other hand, there are the other blog­gers. Who are writ­ers. I mean real tried and true belly crawl through the trenches and tears on their key­boards writ­ers whose con­tent could rival any jour­nal­ist any­where.

Bloggers who pour their heart and soul into every word they write. Who blog to sup­ple­ment what jour­nal­ists don’t write about.

Believe me this post isn’t down on jour­nal­ism or the writ­ing pro­fes­sion in gen­eral. I have great respect for seri­ous writ­ers. A level of respect that is only par­al­leled with my rep­sect for blog­gers who are truly writ­ers in every sense of the word.

Thanks for read­ing,

Literary Nobody

Toya Bryant has written 193 article(s) for this site

Toya Bryant aka Literary Nobody is a Freelance Writer/Blogger who promotes positive thinking and actions within the community and the family. She also writes about the positives and negatives of technology, internet security and social media.

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  • http://nesheaholic.com LaNeshe

    Great post! I def­i­nitely think there are some blog­ger who are writ­ers, and some who are just blog­gers, and they are happy with that. I could under­stand a col­lege trained writer being put off by blog­gers who steal their spot­light.

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    I agree LaNeshe. If I had spent all that time work­ing hard in col­lege and then watched as writ­ers who had never really paid their dues get mas­sive amounts of atten­tion I would be very upset. The good thing about it though is that blog­ging shows that there is plenty room for writ­ers. Also, that you can excel to lev­els that you may not have even as a col­lege edu­cated writer. Blogging has really opened the door to greater oppor­tu­ni­ties than there were before.

  • http://twitter.com/melissameginn Melissa

    This is one of those great debates nowa­days haha. As a “new­bie” writer, I def­i­nitely under­stand why some writ­ers are offended by blog­gers being called writers.What I’ve real­ized is that some writ­ers are, well, snobs. They don’t like to share the spot­light. Personally, it doesn’t bother me. I think that as long as you’re pas­sion­ate and truly love what you’re writ­ing about, then you should be called a writer. Yeah, I worked hard get­ting a bach­e­lor of arts degree in English but I don’t think that made me a “writer.” What makes me a writer are the sto­ries I tell. It’s not because I have some degree. It is a great oppor­tu­nity for those to show­case what they love to oth­ers. That is what a writer really is.

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    Great per­spec­tive Melissa. It’s nice to hear those words from a writer who did the work to earn the degree. You’re right that really what we write dis­tin­guishes who is a writer and who isn’t. However, as long as blogs exist this debate will for­ever con­tinue. Thank you for the com­ment :)

  • http://theactivistwriter.com Diana Estigarribia

    Yes, I under­stand why “writ­ers” capital-​W may resent blog­gers lower-​case-​b. They’re prob­a­bly just wor­ried that what they’re doing isn’t unique any­more, that they’ll be “replaced” by the blog­gers. But I think that is a mis­guided atti­tude. “Writer” is a broad cat­e­gory, esp. now in the inter­con­nected world of online blog­ging.

    I’m one of those peo­ple who has the “W” word in her degree. I’ve been paid for my work. It doesn’t bug me that blog­gers are called writ­ers. If you’re cre­at­ing thought­ful pieces (i.e. posts) then of course, you are a writer. If you’re blog­ging about your kit­ties and the gar­den­ing, good on you. It’s a big world and self-​expression in a good thing.

  • http://kristenacthemaniac.blogspot.com T.Lee

    My def­i­n­i­tion of a writer is any per­son who has a pas­sion for, and enjoys, writ­ing and is pro­duc­ing any­thing writ­ten: a pub­lished book, a mag­a­zine arti­cle, a poem writ­ten on a dirty nap­kin that no one will ever see, a pri­vate jour­nal, and even blog entries.

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    Diana that is such a pos­i­tive response from a “W“riter such as your­self. I agree that what defines a writer has changed sig­nif­i­cantly in the tech­nol­ogy age. Bloggers who started out in obscu­rity are also mak­ing a liv­ing out of their work. There is such a broad spec­trum of oppor­tu­nity for writ­ers of all kinds to be rec­og­nized. It’s nice to know that they have the sup­port from many in the writ­ing com­mu­nity.

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    That’s a great and accu­rate def­i­n­i­tion. Thanks for shar­ing it :)

  • http://twitter.com/ggSpirit Gale Mullings

    This seems a lot like the tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing ver­sus self-​publishing debate in author forums. When I started blog­ging, I had no idea about the venue. It’s been about a year and I’ve learned I still have no clue lol. I enjoy shar­ing through the blog and it does help to pro­vide a writ­ing work­out of sorts but I don’t con­sider the posts a full exam­ple of my writ­ing abil­ity. My pas­sion is to write books. I appre­ci­ate the blog for allow­ing me to con­nect with peo­ple, put myself out there and inter­act. So I sup­pose this would be equal to “van­ity” press of sorts. I’m okay with that in the blog world but the book world is a whole other story. By the same token, writ­ers who take the time to study blog­ging, develop their sites and work tire­lessly to offer a good prod­uct would be, in my opin­ion, “self-​publishers”, which I fully sup­port. Not every tal­ented writer gets that big break, tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing oppor­tu­nity. Anything that chal­lenges the glass ceil­ing, I’m all for!

  • http://twitter.com/ggSpirit Gale Mullings

    This seems a lot like the tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing ver­sus self-​publishing debate in author forums. When I started blog­ging, I had no idea about the venue. It’s been about a year and I’ve learned I still have no clue lol. I enjoy shar­ing through the blog and it does help to pro­vide a writ­ing work­out of sorts but I don’t con­sider the posts a full exam­ple of my writ­ing abil­ity. My pas­sion is to write books. I appre­ci­ate the blog for allow­ing me to con­nect with peo­ple, put myself out there and inter­act. So I sup­pose this would be equal to “van­ity” press of sorts. I’m okay with that in the blog world but the book world is a whole other story. By the same token, writ­ers who take the time to study blog­ging, develop their sites and work tire­lessly to offer a good prod­uct would be, in my opin­ion, “self-​publishers”, which I fully sup­port. Not every tal­ented writer gets that big break, tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing oppor­tu­nity. Anything that chal­lenges the glass ceil­ing, I’m all for!

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    You made an inter­est­ing point about the dif­fer­ence between like some­one like your­self an author who blogs as a form of shar­ing thoughts and writ­ing exer­cise and the other kind of writer for whom blog­ging is a form of self pub­lish­ing. That is very true. It reminds me of the indie vs signed artist argu­ment. Professional writers/​authors etc have the ben­e­fits of get­ting their writ­ing in front of a large audi­ence because of who they write for or who pub­lish their writ­ing. While some blog­gers may never get that level of expo­sure because they aren’t estab­lished so they have to build an audi­ence from scratch.

  • http://www.christa-polkinhorn.com Christa

    Hi Toya, glad to meet you. Everybody is so afraid of com­pe­ti­tion. THERE IS ROOM FOR ALL OF US, whether we are seri­ous bloggers/​writers or just check in occa­sion­ally. Great writ­ers, writ­ers who take their craft seri­ously will con­tinue to thrive and the ones who are just start­ing out and/​or aren’t that accom­plished yet, they at least have a chance now to get their feet wet. It’s great being a writer. Just don’t expect to make tons of money or become a best­seller author–and if you do, well, that’s the great. Otherwise, just keep on writ­ing — if you need to. Christa

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    Thank you for the com­ment Christa and nice to meet you as well. You made a great point there is room for all of us. So many things are writ­ten that we can find some­place to fit, You also made another great point that writ­ing is not about mak­ing tons of money even though we would all like to lol. If any­one writes for the money they will quickly fiz­zle out, but true writ­ers of what­ever capac­ity are in it for the long haul becuase they have to write.

  • Diamond Penmanship

    YEAH!!! I love this!!

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    Thank you so much for your com­ment :) it’s really a big debate that high­lights that we all can have a place.

  • http://yesterdayspoem.blogspot.com vizion­heiry

    Like the new bio!

    Some writ­ers haven’t fig­ured out their pub­lish­ing plat­form nor how to mon­e­tize their work. These are the folks who are mad at blog­gers.

    If a per­son gets paid for writ­ing, whether it be a salary, a paid invoice, or a cor­po­rate adver­tis­ing spon­sor­ship on a blog, they are a writer.

    I also like T. Lee’s def­i­n­i­tion of a writer. It takes money out of the equa­tion com­pletely.



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