—just to jump ahead to the punch-line.
I have been struggling for some time with what I want to say here, how the blog can be satisfying to me. It's something Melvin and I have discussed several times on the phone and by e-mail, as well as at the bleary-eyed Long Island City "staff meeting." I have started numerous posts that ended up in the metaphorical trash basket.
So, when Melvin writes, "Our plan is to post less often but at greater length and even perhaps with more insight—long-form journalism," he may be right ... or he may just be expressing what he believes to be the solution to my vexation. I sense there may be posts that are exactly the opposite, a series of photographs with little text, like the conclusion of my (long-form, I admit) post on Lightning Field.
Or maybe I have already left the reservation. In my line of work—"I'm a tumbler; I'm a government man."—it's inadvisable to let people see indecisiveness, to make public the thought process (unless one is breaking the rule manipulatively).
On the other hand, I am perplexed by blogs that peter out or abruptly end. What happened after that last post? Was the author killed in a car crash? Or did s/he just lose interest, over time or suddenly, without ever writing about it? Not as esoterically as I might have—those are some of the drafts I deleted—but I've now written about it.
