The Battle Between Columnists and Bloggers

I have been having an email debate with by dear friend in Costa Rica, Jo Stuart, over the use of the title "columnist" versus "blogger."  As you will see below, Jo resists being labeled a blogger.  I have  asked myself why people of my generation dislike the notion of blogging.

One reason is that blogging suggests spilling your personal guts on the page and expecting others to be interested.  But that is only true for some blogs.  For others, such as the Huffington Post, for example, the material on the screen is fascinating.  A second reason to hate blogging is reading all the mindless remarks of people commenting on the blog.  Yet, this objection can be avoided by having the blogger moderate her/his blog and putting up only interesting comments.  A last reason is that columnists seem more professional because they get paid.  Now, it's true that many bloggers do not get paid, but the successful ones earn good salaries or get lots of advertising.

I'd like to know from my readers how they feel about the term "blog." 

What do you think of when you hear the term "blog."  Is the distaste for the term primarily generational?  Can one be both a columnist and a blogger?  Let me know.

In the meantime, here's what Jo Stuart has to say about columnists versus bloggers.

My son says, “My mother is very lucky.  She writes a blog and gets paid to do it.”  I tell him I write a column and would prefer being called a columnist.  So here is how I got to write a weekly colum and get paid for doing it.

I moved to Costa Rica in 1992 and immediately fell in love with the country and the people, learning more about the culture every day, how different it is here than it was living in the States.  

There was one English language newspaper, a weekly called The Tico Times.  They had a full page of letters to the editor. Most were complaints about Costa Rica, usually its lack of efficiency, and the dissembling of the people, and of course, the potholes. Annoyed with the complaints, I wrote a perspective entitled, “Mussolini Made the Trains Run on Time – Yes, But.”  Efficiency was not everything, I said, and mentioned  all of the wonderful aspects of Costa Rica. The paper published it.  

The paper also ran a column about living in the campo.  I lived in the city and loved it.  I suggested to one of the editors, Susan Liang, who is also a friend, that someone should write about the city as a contrast.  She said, “Write something.”  That was the beginning of my column, “I’ll Take the City.”

It was easy to write; I just wrote about everyday living in San Jose.  I usually got my inspiration walking the fifteen blocks or so from my apartment to downtown.  I was published erratically and paid for each column.  I had been writing the column for about two years when the paper hired a new – young – editor.  About a year later she told me that they no longer needed my columns.  When I asked her why, she could only shrug.  It was a curious experience. I had never been fired before.  I missed writing, and from the many letters the paper received (and they actually published a half dozen or so), my readers missed me, too.

A year or so later, The Tico Times hired a new manager, a journalism professor from Colorado.  Just as I was leaving for the States, a friend who asked if I might sublet my apartment to him while I was gone.  Jay Brodell came to see my apartment.  He moved in a day after I left and moved out a few days before I returned some four months later.

Jay left the Tico Times and not long afterwards started his online daily newspaper, amcostarica.com.  He invited me for coffee one day and asked me if I would like to write a column to be published every week.  A regular paycheck!  We did not call it “I’ll Take the City,”  but rather came up with the not very exciting title, “Living in Costa Rica.:  Where the Living is Good.”

I’ve been writing my column for over six years.  Once again I mostly write about what I have been doing the past week.  When I was a kid I read Billy Rose’s columns and thought that one day I would like to write like that. I do try, as often as possible, to make a little story – often ironic – of my mishaps in learning to adjust. My friend Mavis said that what she especially liked was my starting out on one subject, bringing in other matters and tying them all together.  Others have commented that I have "a keen observant eye.”  That surprises me.  

As the years pass and I find my days more and more like each other, I have become a news junkie.  I wish I were writing an opinion column, especially about politics, but my editor doesn’t want that.  Some of my time and much of my pleasure has been reading and responding to e-mails from readers. Most of my readers prefer my everyday life columns.
 
As for my son, I tell him  "I don’t even know what a blog is."  He says, “Read your columns.”