A prominent blogger, or independent self-publisher, if you will, decides to stop writing online, and next thing we’re hearing about the imminent demise of the medium.
Sure, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Medium, and the like, have all come along and splinted the domain of the blog/personal website. But, as a media property, or communications tool, a writer’s own website has one distinct advantage over many social media channels. It belongs to the writer, and not some other autarchic entity.
And so, to be clear, when I speak of the “blog” I am referring to a regularly-updated site that is owned-and-operated by an individual (there is, of course, the “group blog,” but it too has a clearly-defined set of authors). And there, in that definition, is the reason why, despite the great unbundling, the blog has not and will not die: it is the only communications tool, in contrast to every other social service, that is owned by the author; to say someone follows a blog is to say someone follows a person.
Originally published Monday 16 February 2015.