What Then Is Blogging?

Adrian Dayton, writing this month on law.com, said:

Of all the Am Law 100 firms, 74 have now launched blogs — 54 new blogs during the past year alone. Still, the top 10 firms continue to lag behind. . . .

Asked about the return on investment from the blogs, [Mark Silow, managing partner of Fox Rothschild] had this to say: “We have picked up a number of clients through the blogs, but the greatest value is that they serves as a validator of our expertise and our knowledge. We’ve received good external publicity as well — trade journals pick up blogs and point to them as great resources.”

Four years ago, a time closer to the dawn of blogging than most people now realize, Kevin LaCroix at the D&O Diary said this in a great post called On Blogging:

There is an unexpected side-benefit from making a practice of observing, thinking about and commenting on trends and developments. That is, these practices ensure that I am aware of and have thought about all of the latest trends and developments. This has a direct payback for my professional practice, which is that I am fully prepared to speak knowledgeably about most topics that are likely to arise in the typical business setting. . . .

I think every blogger starts their blog in a burst of optimism, with a backlog of things they are yearning to express. The early enthusiasm and reservoir of ideas carry the blog for a time. But the real challenge is sustaining the blog after the initial enthusiasm fades and the backlog of ideas is depleted. During the time I have been blogging, there have been many promising new blogs that have dazzlingly burst out, generated truly interesting and impressive content, and then quietly blinked out of existence. Sustaining a blog for the long haul is difficult.

And from the time before blogs began, the masterful Graham Greene had this to say in Ways of Escape. Too dour, perhaps — Greene suffered from bipolar disorder — but his point still stands:

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.