In case you're wondering, the photos come from galleries of friends on douban.com
So yeah, we all know what a blog is right? I mean, you're reading one now. They are very useful for the indie mind too. Saying that, there are some misconceptions going around that are useful to examine.
1) form vs content
2) standards and legitimacy
So, what's a blog ... drum roll please ... it's a type of computer software. That's right. It's a computer program that has many functions with the overall goal of letting you put things in the public domain via the internet.
The content - that is the things themselves, words, pics, ideas, topics etc - can be anything you like. So when you hear people talking about how blogs are like whiny personal diaries, they are just making an association. An incorrect one. You could research, write and produce a piece for a newspaper and have it in the print edition and also put it on your blog with no difference in the process. It's just available in two different mediums.
Useful features of the blog include a feed.
Next the standards and legitimacy. I often hear writers and journalists talk about blogs as being generally untrustworthy, full of opinion (as opposed to fact) and poorly written. These comments imply that the established media are pretty much all trustworthy, full of properly checked facts and well written. That's a good one.
Let's get back to what blogs are - a media - and look at their format and conventions. A blog post has public comments. If anyone wants to, they can instantly add to the article, link new information, criticize it, make a counter point or claim facts to be untrue. The convention is then to leave them there for everyone to see and put verified claims into the main article as updates. This is way ahead of the print media. Don't take my word for it. Last year in the U.K. the PCC suggested that bloggers should adhere to its standards and rules.
Blogs allow indie writers to publish their work easily. It's so easy that you can do it in your spare time and there's no impetus to make money from it directly so you can keep it ad free and 100% trustworthy. Here's my music blog which is coming on for two years old. The separation from the established media is a good thing and allows you freedom and true independence. The work of a small group of music blogs here in Shanghai has left their print counterparts almost completely irrelevant, with the obvious exception of people who don't use the net often or are new to the scene and don't yet know the blogs.
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