I started this blog in 2004. Nearly a decade later, I’d like to think my motivations for writing this blog are are same: it’s a diary, first and foremost. A place where I can document my thoughts, observations, theories, design critique and more. It’s also a place where I can engage in a wider discussion. My blog post responds to yours – or your tweet – and so we go around.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen more and more great industry-focussed magazines that publish online and off, but the flip side to this is I’m noticing more people writing for these magazines and less so on their own blogs. Why is this a problem?

Considered, well-written, edited, and produced content is hard – and time-consuming – to do. Writing an article for one of these successful publications is not an easy thing (well, for me it’s not). Not only do you have to have something notable and interesting to say, but you have to stick with it through the editorial process. You get pushed, prodded and cajoled along the way – mostly for the good, I should say. But sometimes, you may begin with a pithy throw-away idea that wouldn’t amount to a couple of paragraphs on a blog (kind of like this blog post, really), but through the process it gathers weight – and in some cases bloat – to fit the requirements of ‘an article’. And articles are different to blog posts.

In traditional news journalism, this is the difference between a feature and a piece of news. A feature is a story. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It’s designed to have a less time-sensitive, longer shelf-life. But ‘news’ is transitory – documenting a period in time. It doesn’t have a structure like a feature does, and probably doesn’t have to adhere to the same editorial workflow. What we’re seeing on this increasing number of publications are features. And because the authors are writing these pieces, we’re seeing less shorter form writing because that type of content has no-where to live, other than blogs and everyone’s busy.

I’d like to see more balance again. More short, scrappy blog posts (like this one), written off the cuff and in the moment. Sometimes, I’d like to read the author’s actual voice, instead of a homogenised edited one. There has to be a space between 140 characters and 3000 word feature. We all need to blog more, I reckon. Roll on March.