Eschaton
The other day I mentioned Literary Week at Notoe on tghe Atrocities. It gave me a decent touchstone to think about a few things relative to blogging, so I may refer to it a couple of times going forward.
I also mentioned a couple of days ago that Eschaton reads much differently with Atrios on vacation (shit, maybe I should set up the wish list thing) and Leah, Lambert and the farmer filling in. It's so different, I'm wondering how the regulars are taking it. If Eschaton was a brand of soap, it would be like changing the soap from a deoderant bar to something with one-quarter cleansing cream without changing the brand name— not a comment on the content, just on the contrast.
This is what Emma said about Atrios' style (the whole post is good, and will eventually be discussed, though maybe not in this post)
The Ur-blogAtrios? blog
Eschaton is what you might call the ur-blog style, the most stripped-down, bare-bones style. One imagines he?s exasperated at the obviousness of news and its implications. For him, it?s enough to compose a single declarative sentence, using the highlighted link as both barb and target. (I expect that for half the people it?s enough to just read the sentence--going to the linked article is redundant.) It?s effective because Atrios posts regularly, reliably, and comprehensibly. According to his site, he gets 20,000 readers a day, and I bet like me, they go to Eschaton first, to see what?s happening.
… Atrios is to blogging what haiku is to poetry--economy and efficiency. In this example he uses the title to communicate information, then builds upon it with the first sentence, then builds upon that with the second. And so, in 32 words, he?s covered a fairly substantial subject.
The style accentuates immediacy. There?s an immediacy in the regularity with which Atrios posts, and this is reflected in his prose. It?s quick and pithy. The speed of news and communication is palpable on Eschaton, and he treats his readers with a prose style that underscores this ethos.
As a side note, I considered this approach, which in my head I called the FillInThePundit style. I can do it… truth is, anyone who's good at playing the dozens can do it well (I bet Atrios has a bag of "yo mama" jokes laying around). I found I wanted to say more than fits into a properly snarky pointer to a resource.
Anyway, our guest bloggers at Eschaton seem to be more of a fusion of the other two types Emma defined, the Essayist and the Activist. I like that style better, possibly because my own is so similar—cute people always like mirrors. And it seems Atrios likes it too, if the slight increase in the verbosity of his remote posts is any indication.
Working in team mode, everything is flowing kinda nicely. Good team blogs generally seem like a single voice from multiple throats. Right now, Eschaton is a good team blog, and with all the readers and virtual particles it has its advocacy will likely be pretty effective.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 6/10/2003 09:16:26 AM |
