Why Andrew Sullivan Blogs

As blogging is becoming more and more popular, people from around the world are able to share ideas on a diverse range of issues.

Andrew Sullivan describes blogging as the “extreme sport” of writing because of the intense way that bloggers are criticized by readers but are required to stand their ground and face the conflict with determined confidence. The instantaneous way blogs are published on the World Wide Web cause errors to be engrained in the published work. In addition, the rapid rate at which blogs are published is the largest determining factor between it and print. And this hard-core form of blogging requires a certain attraction to sharing with the world, opinions on every current event or personal affair. Andrew Sullivan portrays this by describing, that “blogging requires an embrace of such hazards, a willingness to fall off the trapeze rather than fail to make the leap”.

Sullivan explains that blogging is personal and risky, and creates an element of “human self-correction” when reviewing events of the past because blogs can act as a diary or an event log. Sullivan describes his own experience of a blog being his own event log by noting: “On my blog, my readers and I experienced 9/11 together, in real time. I can look back and see just how I responded to the event, but how I responded to it at 3:47 that afternoon. And at 9:46 that night. There is a vividness to this immediacy that cannot be rivaled by print”.

Blogs are designed to require the bloggers to seek the attention continuously that will keep their readers interested. Sullivan calls this “a broadcast, not a publication”. This causes the blogger to continue blogging in order to keep people from all walks of life still interested.