Blogging: The Rules (per Jonathan Rauch)

My friend Jonathan Rauch discloses his plans.

While I’m blogging, I’m going to try to observe a few rules.

1) No second drafts. There isn’t time.

2) No reporting. There isn’t money.

3) Factuality is approximate.

4) Crabbiness is allowed.

I think he could be quite good at it.

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2 Responses to Blogging: The Rules (per Jonathan Rauch)

  1. danny says:

    Being, nothingness, and a fake Sartre quote that won’t die

    Chicago Tribune
    Writing in the Atlantic in 2003, Jonathan Rauch made a joke.
    “Introverts are also not misanthropic,” he wrote, though some of us do
    go along with Sartre as far as to say ‘Hell is other people at
    breakfast.’” Jean-Paul Sartre said nothing about bagels, but the
    Internet has turned Rauch’s bon mot into fact.

    Mary Schmich was alerted to a piece by Kevin Delaney that “quoted”
    Sartre’s Rauch-written aphorism by Dan Bloom, a Taiwan-based blogger
    who spotted it in a Times supplement distributed with a Chinese
    newspaper. (I can vouch for Bloom’s interest in this matter; he’s
    copied me on 10 emails that he’s sent to the Times and others about
    the gaffe.)

    Schmich called Fred Shapiro, who edited “The Yale Book of Quotations.”
    “Any time you see a quote attributed to Mark Twain, figure that one is
    false,” Shapiro told her. “Similarly with Yogi Berra and Benjamin
    Franklin.” (Indeed, Mike Daisey got a Twain quote wrong when he
    published his now-famous nonapology.) Schmich writes that one of her
    lines is now frequently attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, and that
    something she didn’t write is now often attributed to her.

    Schmich warns readers to be wary of online quotes, but you don’t have
    to bother your iPhone to read an inaccurate quote. I live in the
    Washington, D.C., area, where a mangled quote recently got carved in
    stone, which is actually kind of a tradition around here.

    It’s too bad Rauch didn’t make Sartre say “Hell is other people at
    brunch.” No one would have ever questioned that.

  2. dan bloom says:

    So? Michael, you KNOW Jon, please tell HIM to correct the faux quote in the ALTNTC piece from 2003 or at least issue a department of clarification notice to readers. no?

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