Blogging: An Evolution Over 20 Years

"Words. Concepts. Strategies.," which was sometimes called the Copywrite, Ink. blog started in 2005, was the same year the first blogger received White House press credentials, The Huffington Post was founded, and YouTube was launched. It was nine years after the first blog was created by Justin Hal in 1994, which meant I was a latecomer to blogging but still an early adopter.

I remember telling students about the blog in my Writing for Public Relations course at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Many were working professionals in the field, trying to navigate how to write a decent news release that wasn't automatically filed in the trash can. 

My company wrote scores of news and feature releases in those days, which populated many newspapers, magazines, and trade journals. It was relatively easy work compared to advertising campaigns, mainly because I always approached the business of public relations (in part) like a journalist. Simply put, journalists want good stories, so public relations practitioners should be keen on providing great ones.

They understood the point, but not the next one I made in 2005. Even then, I saw the writing on the wall. 

"The importance of business blogs shouldn't be underestimated," I told them. "While you can sometimes get your message out through the media, you can always get it out on a blog."

They laughed in 2005. Nobody laughed in 2010. Nowadays, blogs have become so integrated and essential for websites that some people wonder if standalone blogs matter anymore when compared to the more common methods of engagement—social networks like Facebook, Threads, Instgram, BlueSky, X, etc. or video platforms like YouTube and TikTok. 

What's The Takeaway After 20 Years of Blogging. 

Admittedly, sometimes I wonder if it's fair to say I've been blogging for 20 years here, given how sporadic I've been with any new material. While this used to be a daily between 2007 and 2010, I've struggled to meet the minimum — one post-every-month goal — that I set in 2016. Maybe this will be the year I hit it! 

It's not for lack of creating content. I'm engaged daily on social networks and produce two or more videos a week across multiple channels. I also write blog posts for other companies — most of which read like articles with varied degrees of formality. 

Most of the other people I used to engage with on blogs have moved on, too. If they write anything, it's likely to appear on LinkedIn or Medium instead of a blog. And, more likely, they mention whatever they used to write about in podcasts and vodcasts, having abandoned their blogs long ago. 

I even wrote about that one. For all those who once dreamed their words of wisdom would be permanently etched into the Internet, it turned out that all they really created was a 404 crisis — thousands of once interlinked posts now lead nowhere. On occasion, I'm even asked why I bother, given that I could probably put my url to better use as an author website. Except ...

This blog has about 3.8 million views and about 30,000 visits a month, whether I add new content or not. The traffic is primarily the result of more than 1,700 posts, many of which are more akin to articles. And for everyone who visits and opts for the way it looks on the web, they can easily find other ways to connect or find my books. In sum, it would be crazy to give it up. It makes much more sense to add to it, here and there, when I have some time. And when it makes sense. 

What are some of the top most-read articles on this blog? 

Knowing When To Post | 17k reads. This was one of my first living case studies on why not everybody was right for the blogging world. Every now and again, the post surges when someone wants to understand the early social media crisis sparked by one company. 

Signing Books: Five Places I Visited For 50 States | 16.6k reads. It's a story about the bookstores I visited during my first year as an author. I still need to write one up pertaining to the national book tour I took last year. Who knows? Maybe next month. 

The Elephant In The Room Of Banned Books | 15.3k reads. This post remains relevant for two reasons. First, because people keep banning books, which is as stupid as it is sad. Second, the point of the article was to illustrate it isn't a red-blue issue. Everybody is up for banning what they don't like. 

Writing Books: Third Wheel As A Debut Novel | 11.7k reads. This post should answer the question many authors ask regularly. Would starting a blog be worth it? Granted, this blog is 20 years old. However, seeing that two of the top five posts are related to my books, I'd say there is something to it. 

Being Steve Jobs: Where The Open Forum Got It Wrong | 10.7k reads. My well-read rebuttal to an American Express article continues to be read and referenced as I made the case that, yes, business owners do want to be like Steve Jobs. Sure, they don't want to be exactly like him. But there was plenty to learn. 

Incidentally, the Steve Jobs and Third Wheel posts are among the top reads in the last 12 months, with 5.45k and 3.29 reads, respectively. Others that always get traction include If 80 Percent of People Won't Change, Why Force Them?, Revealing Weakness: Brian Solis On Authority, and Understanding Viewers.: TV's New Consumers. The latter is one of many articles I wrote about a television show called Jerico, which was canceled only because it had the misfortune of being launched during the dawn of streaming services. 

Nowadays, networks and streaming services would love to have that audience. (The same could be said for Veronica Mars and The Black Donnellys, too). And that brings me to another reason I'll keep this blog around. It is a a written history as it happened — personal, global, and within the blogosphere.

And with that, I will end on one final point. I miss the days when banging out a post in an hour to start my day was part of the routine. It was fun and exciting to see them catch people's interest. But more than that, there was a note of civility and sometimes even chivalry during the golden age of blogs. 

Words weren't so easily tossed about like quips and clubs and weapons, nor were they so easily thrown away. Reputation seemed to matter, and responses were well reasoned. I think we could use a bit more of that today instead of always shooting for the soundbite. Alas, that, too, is part of history.

Fact Checking: The End Of An Experiment

Some writers have the ability to put one word in front of another and make whatever they write about feel as real as if it happened. Great literary writers do it out of habit. The best copywriters, myself included, are trained to weave whatever differential facts they are given with fantasy to make a brand story come to life. And journalists, although the public likes to pretend otherwise, frequently chase down whatever theories they have in their heads before they ever begin to write. 

Sure, people think stories are supposed to land in the laps of journalists out of convenience, but that's not true. Most stories are fabricated out of thin air, with journalists chasing hunches, for better or worse. We mostly hope it will be for the better, but often, it's for the worse or, more precisely, something in between.

All stories are made by the tellers.

The very first article I ever wrote was not much more than speculation. I was a university student enrolled in a basic reporting class when a 6-foot-8 football player injured two security guards at a fraternity party. One of the wounded guards had his face slashed when he was thrown through a window. 

Since the fraternity was sanctioned by the university and the Greek house was on the university grounds, I wondered whether the school could be held liable. To prove my hunch, I called more than a half dozen attorneys until I found one willing to be quoted. He said, simply put, that any decent attorney could bring a liability suit against the school. It was couched in the idea that any attorney could sue anybody for anything, but I left that part out when I talked to other sources. 

I also left the part out when I learned what was said by asking the coordinator of campus standards what she thought. She said she feared the lawyer was right, especially because all events that serve alcohol must be approved by the fraternity's adviser, her office, and the university president. Without a waiver of liability, at minimum, even the idea that the event would even need security guards was an admission. 

It was a great story, but one that never sat well with me despite being the reporter. I had opened up a can of worms because of what had occurred at the frat party despite no liability suit ever being filed. And worse, several people who trusted me enough to speak candidly found themselves in hot water. 

Yes, anyone can assume that new policies must be made. But that's not the point of this piece. I want to offer it as evidence that facts are not magical truths but malleable constructs. Even someone with a college sophomore's worth of experience can do it in a few hours. Despite no liability suit in existence, the article I wrote resembled fact, even if it remained untested in court. 

Facebook's policy change is the right course. 

I have many friends who are fearful of Facebook's upcoming policy changes on fact-checking. They think Facebook and other Meta platforms will descend into a misinformation free-for-all akin to what they think happened on X when Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. 

"It's time to get back to our roots around free expression. We're replacing fact checkers with Community Notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes," said Mark Zuckerberg in his video. 

My view is slightly different, but then again, I was one of the mistakes Zuckerberg is talking about. My original Facebook account was shut down by fact checkers who mistook fictional stories as political statements. Specifically, when the network's strict policy was implemented, it retroactively lit my account up like a Christmas tree because some of the characters in my stories were wrong or politically incorrect or whatever. And unfortunately for me, neither the algorithm nor the fact checkers could tell the difference. Their decision would be akin to All In The Family being taken off the air for whatever Archie said. 

It was a painful experience, largely because I had years of personal memories attached to the account, alongside 1,400 people eagerly awaiting my debut novel. My connections to them were gone overnight. 

The state of media today isn't always a matter of fact. 

Technology is an excellent and crazy thing. Every day, today's journalists do just what I did as a college student except with a zillion times more efficiency. They use platforms to call for experts on this subject or those with very specific beliefs. Then, they elevate those voices to weave together stories with all the strength of reality. Those stories, in turn, are then used to silence other stories that are either late to the party or slanted away from a preferred narrative. 

Fundamentally, this is what was wrong with third-party fact checking all along. People operated with different facts, and then fact checkers used their biases to decide which might be right, even if none were correct or much more than a theory. 

Even some of Meta's own employees struggle to see this as problematic, saying that Meta is "sending a bigger, stronger message to people that facts no longer matter, and conflating that with a victory for free speech.” But they are wrong. 

Facts do still matter. But the Internet has to work out that the pendulum went too far in one direction by building a foundation of "facts" that weren't really facts and then judging all other evidence or speculation or theory against a fabricated set of standards. As Mark Twain once said: “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable." And words, I might add, are even more pliable than that, given how much bodies of fiction — in books and film and online — shape our moral compasses. 

Give the policy change its day. You might be surprised to find that the old adage about free speech that I learned as a journalist will hold true: The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.