I’m having a problem. The problem I’m having is with the rec list, which I trust to help me weed through the large number of diaries posted throughout the day on the Daily Kos for quality diaries that do what writing is supposed to do. I’m having a larger problem, as well. The larger problem I’m having is with diaries in general on this site. The root of the problem is the same.
Most diaries posted on this site, including lately many of the rec'd diaries (read wrecked), do not do what writing is intended to do. Writing has two basic purposes: persuade or inform. And though writers on the Kos are not journalists in the classic sense, they can be informative. They can also be persuasive. What they should never be is thoughtless.
Lately, many of the diaries posted on the Kos have been of the thoughtless variety. I know these diaries well: they usually have a title that points to something some creative or critical-thinking personality did (some original content someone created to persuade us of an idea).
Opening the diary almost always reveals a fifty-word lede that discusses the context of a linked video or long block quote, followed by a ten-word sentence ending in a colon. The purpose of this sentence is to summarize, in hyperbolic language, what the upcoming video or quote is doing. Following the long quote or video, we get a patronizingly simplistic, often ridiculous analysis of the effect of the news in the form of a conclusion.
Ready. Here we go.
Title: McCain Slammed by Letterman Three Nights in a Row!!!
Lede: The last three nights, John McCain has gotten his ass handed to him by David Letterman. You’ll all recall that McCain stood Letterman up recently. Well now, it seems, Mr. Letterman is getting his revenge.
Ten-Worder, with Colon (and a comma-splice because the writer is usually too excited to remember rules of grammar or doesn’t know them): Check out this clip of last nights show, McCain really gets it:
Ridiculous analysis in the form of conclusion: I don't know about you, but if I were John McCain, I would worry about getting on the bad side of these guys. The McCain campaign is really going downhill when even someone like Letterman keeps coming after them.
Sooner or later, the writer posts updates about how wonderful it is to be rec'd.
The trouble with these diaries is that they don't do either of the two things writing is intended to do. They do not persuade except in a cursory, basic sense. No one would argue the conclusion to such diaries is insightful or advances discourse. The do not even inform, highlight important news that flew under the radar. The former is more valuable, but I would take either intention.
No, these diaries don't inform because the news they purport to put forward is common knowledge. What idiot, for instance, doesn't know that Letterman bashed McCain or Palin? (Yet as I type, there is a diary on the rec list that is essentially video of this "news".) And they don't persuade because their analyses are juvenile, obvious, ridiculous, or all three.
They are wasted space. They are ineffective. They are worthless. They are not good diaries. You may not like the content of a diary, you may not agree with its stance, but it should provide a stance; or, you may not like the news a diary breaks, it may not make you happy and jolly, but it should be news (new + s).
The purpose of a diary being to persuade or inform, a diary that does not do so is useless, and a site that promotes such diaries becomes useless. If the Kos persists in allowing such waste-of-space diaries to make the rec list, it may find itself losing credibility even among its users, a sad response that I'm afraid, judging from some comments I've read in response to such waste-of-space diaries, is already happening.