Is blogging dead? I seem to recall that discussion surfacing every so often since Twitter really took off.

Last week The Economist published an article on the evolving blogosphere, the vast field of dead blogs and slower growth of of blogs - which spurred a very interesting discussion over at Eirik Newth's blog (in Norwegian) when he blogged his thoughts on it.

For my own part I am very aware that I've been blogging less here in recent times, which is due to me also runnning the blog of the Norwegian Online News Association and long work days writing for money.

But I keep promising myself to find more time to blog because I still find it invaluable for a number of reasons. Therefore I was delighted to see Hans Kullin of the excellent Media Culpa put word to some of the reasons he still blogs in an interview with John Cass:

"it is a way to push myself to think deeper about a subject and to learn more. When you are forced to articulate your own opinion about a topic, you do more research and it seems to stick better in your memory. Then there is the social aspect. By writing a blog, I engage in a conversation with smart people and that is always a lot of fun. It is also a great way to build a good network. But perhaps most of all, my blogging has always been fueled by the reactions from other people, who link to or comment about my content. The more (positive) reactions you get, the more fun it is to blog. And that’s where I have a real problem to motivate myself to blog these days. It seems that many people don’t have as much time to blog today as they used to, before Facebook and Twitter grew popular."

I agree with most of that, but am also reminded on a short post I wrote a few years back which I feel still holds true. Two key thoughts from that: 1) don't see you blog as a finished package but use it as a backup brain, as public notebook, 2) treat it as part of what you're doing, as one method to achieve what you're doing, not as taking time away from journalism but as another way of doing journalism. I can say a lot on the latter point but no time right now, so do check out the full post(s) (and I do hope the links still work)