Blogging in the Funny Papers

Hi, folks. So, there I was reading the Sunday
funnies (on

Sunday, of course -- I'm running a little behind), when I came across
a

mention of blogging that I thought I'd share with
you.

The comic is the fairly awesome Candorville, by Darrin Bell, who is
himself a blogger. I thought it was especially
relevant, considering that it came right on the heels of the Blog Trends Survey and my entry asking
Why
We Blog.

I've excerpted the comic below;
you can find the entire comic on the Candorville
Website:



To
summarize, blogger Lemont has a freakout when Susan
says that she's read his latest blog entry, but leaves him to wonder
what she thinks about it.

Looking at the survey results, you could take a couple of differing
viewpoints:

* Lemont is the
exception

that proves the rule: He's one of those 3.8% of bloggers who "describe

themselves as blogging perfectionists, obsessive and
compulsive."

* Lemont is normal,

in that he's just like the 65% of us who feel disappointed when
someone

posts a negative comment to our blogs, so he just wants to
know.

* Lemont just overreacted
a

bit, since 40% of bloggers say "it is important to address messages

people have posted in their blog in a timely manner," and come on...

you can't just leave a guy hanging like that.

* Or
simply, that even though most bloggers blog for ourselves, we're not
machines: We still care about what other people
think.





So, what do you think?

In another comic venue, Gary
Trudeau's Doonesbury

has also recently covered some blog issues.  He's had a few
strips

on blogging, starting with issues that blogger Zipper faces with his
Krispy KremeDonut of the Month blog
feature:



In
four panels, Trudeau covers two important blog
topics:

1. The bit of blog
etiquette that says you don't steal
someone else's idea (at least, not without giving proper
credit)
2. The idea that folks feel
pressured to update their blogs (which the blog survey
debunks to

some extent, given that two-thirds or respondents say they don't worry

about churning out entries on a schedule, so therefore, no deadlines
to

speak of).

In the next day's strip,

Trudeau takes the issue of how TV news organizations are grappling
with

the challenge of how to integrate blogs in their coverage (or, as
skeptic

Jeff puts it, "What a concept -- take the unreadable
and make it illegible!").

Actually, in the weeks
since that strip was posted, CNN (a part of Time-Warner, as is AOL,
yadda yadda) has tried to go beyond just showing screenshots of blogs,
with Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room. 

I haven't watched it yet, since it's inconveniently broadcast from

3pm-6pm ET, so I don't know if the format works, though here is a writeup in Wired News.





Feel free to leave your comments below (you know you can't leave a guy
hanging like that.) Thanks. -- Joe