A chat with Darice today led me to a brilliant quote by Dan Cederholm.

“I’d like to post here more often — not just to fill up bits and bytes, but to write again. Remember when blogs were more casual and conversational? Before a post’s purpose was to grab search engine clicks or to promise “99 Answers to Your Problem That We’re Telling You You’re Having”. Yeah. I’d like to get back to that here.”

For a really long time this year I have been thinking about what went wrong with blogging over the last years. Some years ago blogging was all about having an opinion, participating to the conversation, being opinionated. I used to call bloggers online columnists.
During my time at Splashpress Media it was important to me that every writer would add personal comments to their posts. Some authors were thanked because of their boring reporting style. Certain blogs felt like reading classifieds. Often I missed the blogging element.

When I joined SPM I was interviewed by Michael D. Pick, of WordPress.tv fame, and I think there are some money quotes in that interview. Particularly this question from Michael:

One of the things that set apart your blogging for me, when I first encountered your work, was this total fightclub disregard for kissing arse, going through the motions and formalities, or even following any kind of pattern other than one you set yourself. It reminded me of what blogs were before everyone got so full of themselves and started acting like stuffed-suit journalists. What’s the motivation or thinking behind that, and is that still the way you like to work?

In the interview I expressed what would soon become my general feeling, one of the main reasons I needed a change in direction and left the network.

Blogging is about opinions and being honest to yourself. Don’t write for people who might discover your site, bring you your five minutes of fame, but publish *your* thoughts, be honest with yourself otherwise you’re writing for an online magazine and not blogging.

Blogging certainly needs to reincarnated and we need to fight the battle for the quick buck, return to old values. Put blogger back in blogs.

During the month of November I will feature a series ‘What went wrong with blogging‘ on frankylicio.us.

I can not promise that I will not offend anyone.