I realize I have written a rather confusing and hopefully provocative headline. A few days ago I wrote a dairy about recent events in Berkley, Missouri titled with the headline, Something is Definitely Rotten in Berkley. As expected I received a rash of comments. Some praised the diary while others totally trashed it. I was going to put this response into a comment within that article when I decided that it is better to just create an entirely new diary to discuss it so this topic receives a wider viewership. This will save me the work (hopefully) associated with the requirement to explain myself each and every time someone makes the same basic comment. Follow below the fold and I will attempt to tell you all about it.
What I found in regard to this diary and other diaries I have written that the most critical commenter’s are obviously the ones who really have not read the dairy. I had no real proof of this theory so that is why I came up with the headline I ultimately chose. I figured it accomplished three things. It roughly informed the readership what the content of the article was going to be about, it was provocative enough to draw in a moderate amount of readers, and third; it was misleading.
When I started working on this diary I was fairly convinced that the officer who shot Antoine Martin was probably just another abusive cop who shot what was probably an unarmed teen, and events were underway early on to provide cover for this officer. The title I pre-chose was pretty much with all this in mind.
But a funny thing happened. The more I investigated this story, the more I began to believe the officer involved was either totally within his right to defend himself against what may have been an aggressive teen or else he had just and legitimate cause to believe his life was in danger. Whether the danger was real or not is a matter of perception but you had better believe that if any one of us was in the same basic situation, we are going to do whatever we have to do to react immediately to best defend ourselves and we are not going to wait around to ask questions if the threat level appears to be high enough. I think this situation met those criteria by the officer.
Once I had made this determination and edited the dairy appropriately to reflect my new found knowledge, the only thing I did not edit was the headline. It still fit the first two of my criteria for a headline but it was not totally honest. I however decided to leave it that way to help “out” the commenter’s who were making their assessment of the diary’s contents based solely on the headline.
The biggest complaint I got is that I was attempting to use the evidence to generate a conspiracy theory and that my dairy was too wordy and too long.
Regarding the conspiracy theory accusation, the only thing about that dairy that screams conspiracy theory is the headline. For anybody that actually read it they know they are not able to legitimately make such a claim. The ballsy part of such comments is that they not only stated their opinion but had the nerve to tutor me on how it should be done. I am not against accepting advice and positive feedback but I do not want it from somebody that is basing the advice on only the headline and not the dairy itself.
In regard to article length and wordiness, I absolutely know that a short article is much better than a long one to hold someone’s attention or to get them to read it in the first place. I, myself, do a quick scan through the article to see how long it is before I even attempt to read it. If it is not short I typically do not read it yet I have a tendency to write long articles.
The reason for this seeming double standard is that I actually will read a very long article if the first couple of paragraphs are written well, does not entirely give away the plot of everything to follow, and can manage to hold my interest. When I write, this is what I attempt to do when I know the dairy is necessarily long. But there is yet another less obvious reason I write long stories (although I always try to keep in mind that I have to keep the reader interested). This reason is the fact that unlike a newspaper with attorney’s on retainer to defend against errors or potentially libelous content, I do not have such a staff at my disposal and hence the reason I chose the title to this particular dairy that I did. I try always to use the word “dairy” over the word “article” but I do quite often slip up and use the wrong word.
I think if I claimed what I write is an article that I could be potentially held legally responsible for anything I write. By claiming this to be a dairy rather than an article, I think that goes a long way toward releasing me from any such liability.
The wordiness to me is another defense mechanism. I attempt to take the reader along on a journey inside my mind and give reasons for some of the choices and/or interpretations of evidence or other factual data I use to come to some of my conclusions. I certainly have the capability to write a short, uninteresting, factual “article” but I do not want the liability that goes with that plus you can just go to some of the articles that I, and most other Daily Kos, diarist’s use as the baseline for our own diaries and it would make Daily Kos virtually irrelevant.
I believe the real value of Daily Kos is that it is a forum that allows diarists to use objective data to come to subjective conclusions. Rather than just leaving those conclusions totally up to the reader, it even allows the diarists to make leading statements in support of those conclusions. I do not believe this is a freedom that any major independent newspaper allows. But there is still an even larger caveat here. Daily Kos is geared toward a progressive audience. Conservatives have absolutely no trouble generating conspiracy theories or stating opinions. Progressives should have that same basic freedom if they are to go toe to toe with conservatives.
I am not advocating that everyone writing a dairy for Daily Kos turn it into a book. Shorter is better but if the data dictates a long dairy then so be it. Just try to do all you can to keep it interesting and do not give the plot away too early because most people stop reading at exactly this point and that could be disastrous if the details are really important.