blogging #CEW2013

Joe Berry, CEW 2001, Workplace

…& back to my resolution to blog more now that Campus Equity Week is bearing down on me. This year it is a well oiled, well funded machine spewing out links, resources, events, and so on to be shared, re-posted, RT'd, turned into blog fodder. I can pawn some but not all off on other social media and ever trusty syndication. As sponsoring organization, the New Faculty Majority's still official blog has a feed on the CEW page. With that comes obligation. Obviously, I need a blogging plan to make it through the month - one that does not no point in duplicate. No point in that. Here's what I have in mind:

CEW 2001, Workplace

• personal reflections on CEW experiences; 
• integrating, weaving together, the many threads
• highlighting events and activities; 
• noting key issues
• looking out for orphans
• revisiting past CEW activities and events; 
• lots of pictures
• reviewing the history of Campus Equity Week and Fair Employment Week (Canada);
• covering the coverage
• looking forward

Even with ramped up CEW blogging, I will have to blog like one possessed to make a decent showing for the year. Deadlines and challenges can help. Let this be one that does...


Is this what mid-blog crisis is like? The average lifespan of a blog is three years. I've been chugging along here since It's less a matter of not blogging than a combination of overwhelmed by other social media and blogging more on the NewFac Tumblrs than here ~ but still more than just that. Call it a blog identity crisis.


Back in 2009, there was a rash of "How Facebook killed blogging" post. Then much fewer, perhaps due to blogs going dark, traded in for Facebook's easier post and promote. There are still a lot of bloggers though. New ones. Searching turns up a number of contrary posts on how Facebook and Twitter help blogging because the can promote and send traffic back to blogs.

Both positions are right - and wrong - not all for the same reasons. As they say about relationships, it's complicated. Facebook has helped traffic here because the blog syndicates there. Facebook interferes with the blogging process because maintaining active, content rich pages takes time, cuts into blogging time. Now mobile is nipping at blogging's heels. Xcoonomy's well thought out "Facebook Killed My Blog" is fair to both.

On top of that, Facebook is more casual. I don’t feel like my Facebook posts have to be long, polished, or uniquely insightful. All that’s important is that they be authentic. And because the activation energy for posting on Facebook is so much lower, I do it a lot more often. I’ve shared hundreds, possibly thousands, of links, check-ins, photos, and videos on Facebook over the last three years, compared about 60 posts on Travels With Rhody.

I’m hardly the first to notice this trend. In fact, classic blogging, in the sense of creating diary-like essays, images, or videos and organizing them online in reverse chronological order, probably passed its peak several years ago. Back in 2006, some 28 percent of teenagers and young adults had a blog, but by 2010 only 15 percent did, according to a survey that year by the Pew Internet Project. At the time, only 11 percent of adults still had a blog; 73 percent said they used Facebook. Pew hasn’t even bothered to redo the survey since then.

Jennifer James' perspective in "How Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Comments Killed Your Blog" expresses where I stand with all my own blogging.

Twitter, Tumblr, G+ and other platforms...yet other considerations...but not for today. Suffice it to say all have their place, suit different styles and audiences. There are too many for any one blogger to do all. I know. I've tried. Syndication helps. A richness of options is better than its opposite.