I've been thinking about the comments thing. My old (print) magazine had a huge section called "shotgun reviews" for which we had an open call for art reviews of 200-300 words. We rarely denied a review, and when we did it was pretty much solely on the basis of it being too promotional without saying much. Lots of novice artists got coverage, and lots of novice writers got published alongside some of the most experienced art writers in Canada and some of the best artists in the world. Also (due mostly to me and my friend Von Bark) other things got covered like sidewalk cracks, birds, cats and Christmas. Anyhow. I like the comments section on blogs very much, but I liked the shotgun reviews better. For one thing the mediators (myself and my co-editor) were in the background, so the territory of the page really did belong to the writers. For another thing the writing was edited and considered and even the crappy stuff was pretty good. A ton of people read it who never contributed, but still felt like it was theirs. I want something like that online. The blog is probably as sastisfying as it can get without devoting undue time and financial resources (the reason we stopped making the mag - the $$$ debt is not pretty) to editing and image-sourcing other people's writing, but I'm still casting around for options. Any ideas?
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- sally mckay 7-02-2004 5:17 pm