I offer the below for your consideration – citation and explanation follow the lengthy quote.
The blog…is a one man show. One has complete freedom of expression, including, if one chooses, the freedom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious and “high brow” than is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of periodicals. At the same time, since the blog is always short…in principle, at any rate, can reach a bigger public. Above all, the blog does not have to follow any prescribed pattern. It can be in prose or in verse, in can consist largely of maps, or statistics or quotations, it can take the form of a story, a fable, a letter, an essay, a dialogue, or a piece of “reportage.” All that is required of it is that it shall be topical, polemical, and short.
As one might guess, this isn’t about blogs at all, but rather about pamphleteers writing before the American Revolution. The original quote is below, and is taken from Bernard Bailyn’s Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winning book, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Bailyn, in turn, is quoting Orwell writing in British Pamphleteers.
The pamphlet [George Orwell, a modern pamphleteer, has written] is a one man show. One has complete freedom of expression, including, if one chooses, the freedom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious and “high brow” than is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of periodicals. At the same time, since the pamphlet is always short and unbound, it can be produced much more quickly than a book, and in principle, at any rate, can reach a bigger public. Above all, the pamphlet does not have to follow any prescribed pattern. It can be in prose or in verse, in can consist largely of maps, or statistics or quotations, it can take the form of a story, a fable, a letter, an essay, a dialogue, or a piece of “reportage.” All that is required of it is that it shall be topical, polemical, and short.
