Hat tip to the estimable Blue Gal, who points us to the following two sources (though no transcript yet). Birmingham Blues writes from this year’s Writing Today conference:

I’m a blogger.

Which, according to [Time critic] Richard Schickel, the lunchtime keynote speaker, makes me an “idiot,” writing only for my mother and perhaps a distant cousin. Hey, Dick, I might have one cousin who reads my blog, but my mother? Never.

Clearly, Mr. Schickel is an accomplished and successful writer, but I didn’t quite follow his criticism of blogs. He was in the middle of a talk about the writing life — write every day, follow your instincts when choosing your subject matter, savor those times you can write without compromise, and get paid for your work. All good points, and perhaps he was thinking of that last one when he said that blogging is for “idiots.” After all, very few of us get paid for our work.

Now, I don’t know what that makes Joe Klein: Either Klein’s an idiot, or not a blogger. Tough call.

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