David Greenberg wrote a NYT article about guest blogging. A couple of responses are here and here.
In the article he said guest blogging was "the online equivalent of what David Brenner used to do for Johnny Carson". From the reader/viewer point of view, he's right. When Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show he would have a guest host when he was on vacation - no reruns. David Brenner wasn't the only guest host but he was a fairly regular one. He did a good job - he was funny and he handled the talks with the evening's guests fairly well. But it didn't matter if he did as well as Carson would have, he wasn't Johnny.
It's the same with blogs and guest bloggers. Even if the guest has the same political philosophy as the regular blogger (and I gather in this case he doesn't), I feel a sense of disappointment that has nothing to do with the quality of the posts.
I think Greenberg made a couple of mistakes. First he assumed blogging was easy. It's not, at least it isn't when you want the type of reader interaction he was hoping for. Second, he assumed it was hard. It is, but not in the way he seems to think. Doing it well does require some dedication and is challenging but the challenges are different from someone producing their own blog than the challenges for someone who is a substitute blogger.
The only way to know how well you'll do as a blogger is to start your own. For me "doing well" means enjoying it. If you begin by setting goals of x-number of comments or x-number of visitors it will just become another chore and who needs that?
Posted by marybeth at May 18, 2005 02:50 AM Blogging