I love reading blogs too, because I love hearing about other people's dreams, adventures and happenings, described in their own voice and featuring their own opinions. It's good to be exposed to ideas other than your own, and so reading blogs is almost always a positive experience for any writer, I think. People's blogs are their own personal record, and those who write them do not seek approval, applause, or payment...just a listening ear. Well, most of the time, that is.
Recently one of the blogs I read has started a semi-regular plea for funds and donations, kind of like the pledge drives for public television stations, and that has left me to ponder the nature of blogs, as well as their future.
When I was working at the newspaper, for instance, I was offered the chance to blog on the paper's website. "It will be great, because you can write about anything," they said, "and write however often you want." Which was a problem. I already wrote all the time for them and was well paid for it. I could even pitch my own stories, which meant I was, in fact, already writing about exactly what I wanted, much of the time. And despite their claims that I could write about whatever I wanted, there would still have been some obvious limits in terms of language used and content.
The blogging, they continued, would kind of be the same thing as my column, except, of course it would have to be for free. Unpaid.
I turned them down for the simple reason that, if you are going to blog on a publisher's website, you expect to be paid, simply because the people who read it are already paying customers of the newspaper. If you are going to blog for free, you generally want to do it in an environment of complete freedom, where you can say exactly what you want without holding back.
But to want the complete freedom to blog and yet be paid by one's readers, just for the pleasure of allowing them to continue "sharing the adventure" seems a bit off to me. "Let me live my life, write about it and then you can pay me in order that I can continue living it," is what it says to me. It also creates the issue of readers then expecting you to use their funds wisely. Someone who donates $50 bucks to keep someone's life afloat may also then want a say in how the money is spent. They may bristle when they see the donee buying something they think is frivolous or too expensive. And suddenly, readers start judging how your/their money is spent, the same way we judge whether we like the programming we're getting after donating to public television. Or wondering how our funds are being used when we see our minister driving away from Sunday services in a Mercedes. It certainly creates an interesting potential for conflict.
Write a regular column on deadline, and it's fair to expect to be paid for it (although many fantastic writers labor in unpaid positions at magazines and other publications, just to get their byline in print). You're on the clock for the person who pays you, and you expect something in return. Write a book on contract, and you should, again, expect to be paid for it, due to the work hours it entails and because you are essentially working for them. "We all gotta serve somebody," as Bob Dylan said.
But to expect to be paid for posting some cool photos and nice pieces about your life and your opinions on whatever you choose to pontificate on that day? To me, that would just feel somehow like taking advantage of your audience, squeezing them for sympathy funds, or perhaps just waaay over-estimating the impact your blogging has on others.
But as for this blog and 99 percent of the other good ones out there, they will probably always be free to read and enjoy, with no pesky "donate" button at the bottom of the page.
Let's just say most respectable bloggers are doing their part to keep the "free" in "freedom of the press."
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