Reader Confuses Journalist's Column for a Blog

Posted on August 25, 2005

The Washington Post's Robert MacMillan says a reader wrote in to him and confused his Random Access column as a blog.

I really like reading your blog," a reader recently wrote to me.

There must be some mistake, I thought. Random Access is a column.

Well, a column or blog is in the eye of the reader. I've gotten plenty of praise and scorn for things I've written about in this space, but the name for this daily publication tends to vary depending on who's writing. I have a blog, a column, a daily article, a story...

There are definitely a lot of confused readers out there about what is and what is not a blog. Many readers are just looking for content that interests them and it doesn't matter to them whether it is published as a blog, column, forum or website. More columns are probably going to be confused as blogs as the term "blog" becomes more widely used. And with many newspapers now having both blogs and columns it just makes it that much more confusing for readers.

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