A creative writing teacher once asked my sister who her audience was: Who is it that you write your short stories for? When my sister responded that she wrote with her father and her brother in mind, the teacher looked at her and said, no, those people are not your audience. They are your censors.
I sometimes have the same problem with blogging.
It’s not that I worry that I will offend my wife or my mother with something I put in this blog. Neither of them ever reads it. After a very successful stint with email in the 1990’s, my 85-year-old mother has given up on trying to keep her computer and her Internet working. And my wife has more important things on her mind.
But it is sometimes a challenge to write something, particularly when I find that I have multiple audiences in mind for the things I put in this blog. And, as always, what may work for one targeted audience may not work for another.
Scott Greenfield posted recently about the large number of new bloggers seeking his advice on how to become a member of the criminal law blogging gang: “Some come in through the front door, sending me email asking questions about blawging. Others try the backdoor, leaving a comment along the lines of, ‘I posted about this subject too!!!’”
I am one of the people who want to be a member of this gang. I’d like to think that the same group of criminal law bloggers that I read and respect also read and respect this blog. So, in that sense, these bloggers – Bennett, Horowitz, Pryor, Gamso, Gideon – are all included among my censors. Thinking about how they might react to something can’t help but affect what and how I write.
Greenfield himself is also a frequent reader of other criminal law blogs, including this one. And he is a difficult, discerning reader. He likes to challenge people. Greenfield has said some very complimentary things about this blog. He has also said has some less than complimentary things. In a recent comment on my site, for example, he cautioned that by avoiding challenging thoughts and ideas, I could be relegating this blog to the list of “tepid and simplistic” blogs that no one else would ever take the trouble to read.
With his enormous readership – Greenfield was just listed as #4 on the Avvo list of blogs – a single link by Simple Justice can send a lot of readers to a blog. The flip side, of course, is that Greenfield, if he wanted to, could also do a lot of damage. In that sense, Greenfield is a potential censor for anyone writing on the Internet. He is certainly one of my censors.
I read a Memorial Day piece recently by Norm Pattis that was so beautifully written – probably one of the best things I have ever read in the blogosphere – that I couldn’t think of anything to say but, gee, I wish I had written that. My sister has said that this is the ultimate compliment you can ever pay a writer. And, with respect to this particular entry by Pattis, my comment went beyond that. It wasn’t just that I wished I had written that particular piece. It was that I wished I could write like that at all. Ever.
Pattis was typically poetic in response to this compliment: “You do,” he wrote. “I read it.” With these five words, Pattis just became another censor. Thinking that a lawyer and writer of Pattis’ stature reads this blog could paralyze me. If I let it.
If Greenfield is the tough love reader, then Mirriam Seddiq is the supportive reader. She is almost maternal in the feedback she gives me. She pushes me to improve certain things but she picks her words carefully. She is always encouraging and she always lets me know she has my back. In this sense, she now plays the role once played by my sister back when I was writing short stories. But, to the extent I allow her encouragement to affect what and how I write, she too has joined my ever growing list of censors.
But I don’t just write for other criminal law bloggers. I also have other audiences in mind.
Let me get go directly to one of my most controversial audiences: Google. I admit it. I do it much less than I used to, but I still seed some of my posts with terms that will work well with Google. When I have nothing better to write about, I occasionally do filler posts with an eye to improving search engine optimization (SEO) for my website and blog.
Mark Bennett has kidded me about this. A couple of months ago, for example, he pointed out that I had included the very SEO-friendly term “criminal defense lawyer” three times in the opening paragraph of an entry I did. He was right. I had. And in that case I had done it without even realizing it and in a post I had not intended as a simple filler. SEO had begun to take over my writing. To the extent that I now think of Bennett every time I insert an SEO term, Bennett has now joined my list of censors.
I try not to apologize for the SEO stuff. Thinking about SEO is for me like choosing a magazine or periodical magazine with a higher circulation rate over one with fewer readers to publish a short story or an article. Unless you are just writing for yourself, like Scott Greenfield says he does, you’d like to think that more readers will come across something you have written. And they won’t read an entry they can’t find.
Greenfield, Bennett, Turkewitz, and others have cautioned against even thinking about SEO. The process needs to be more organic, they say. The SEO stuff will put off the more serious readers, and the SEO will come about naturally over the longer term with quality posts and the large and growing number of readers the quality posts will generate.
I understand all of this. But, with a nascent law practice, I am also thinking shorter term, and this is where my next group of targeted readers comes into play: potential clients.
Greenfield and other more established criminal defense lawyers say they get few if any clients through the Internet. This makes sense when you consider the types of crimes they defend and the rates they charge. Someone charged with a serious white collar crime or capital offense is not going to get his or her lawyer off the Internet.
I don’t do serious white collar crimes or capital offenses, at least in this point in my practice. I do assaults, DWIs, thefts, firearm violations, and drug cases. Someone charged with one of these crimes may well check the Internet for information on the offense, and I know from Google Analytics that the information I have put up on assault, firearms, and drugs are the most frequently visited pages on my website. These visitors also spill over onto my blog.
I have no idea whether things I say on this blog puts off potential clients who might otherwise have hired me. But I do know that the people who do hire me often tell me that they did so because of something they read on either my website or blog. One client, for example, recently told me he hired me because of an entry I did on deferred sentencing agreements and simple assault. When I met with the client’s wife, she told me that it was she who had found me on the Internet and insisted that her husband contact me. She had read every single word I had written on the subject matter.
I also write for other criminal lawyers, particularly solo practitioners who are just beginning a practice. My piece on flat fees versus hourly rates may not have been of interest to established criminal defense lawyers who have already thought through everything there is to know about pricing structures. But, as I know from the many phone calls and emails I receive, the information is helpful to someone first considering these issues for him-or herself.
In addition, one of the things I have enjoyed most about private practice is the network of friends I have developed among other criminal lawyers in the D.C. area. This blog has enabled me to expand that network. I will be meeting for lunch next week, for example, with another D.C. criminal defense lawyer who found me through my website and blog.
I also know that law students read this blog. If the assault and weapons pages are the most frequently visited pages on my website, the three entries I did on taking the Virginia bar in February are among the most popular pages on my blog. While I have no intention of writing any additional pieces on this subject, I know that law students are frequently among the most avid readers of criminal law blogs. I would like to think that what I write – written from the perspective of someone else who is just starting out – could be of interest to them.
Friends and family are probably the last potential audience for this blog but here I have to agree with Greenfield that this is a very mixed bag. I do know that my sister and brother-in-law are regular readers of this blog. But apart from them, I find that most people in this category check out this site out of an initial curiosity but then move on. There are also limits to this potential source of readers. You only have so many friends and family members.
Some people say that the success of the Beatles was due in large part to the competition among John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison. Each member of the Beatles pushed the others to become better songwriters. While I am not comparing criminal law bloggers to the Beatles, I do think the same principle applies.
It can be a cranky and disagreeable group. And the criticism can sting. Greenfield cautions that you shouldn’t put something out on the Internet unless you can withstand a little heat. You shouldn’t be a criminal defense lawyer if you don’t have a thick skin. While I agree with him completely, I still have some amorphous and undeveloped thoughts on civility on the Internet, on the movement toward what Mirriam Seddiq has termed a “kinder and gentler blogosphere.” I think, for example, how political considerations within our government can sometimes be used as an excuse for simple pettiness, for grown adults acting like children.
But these are thoughts best left for a future entry. The point is that, for the most part, the challenges and the criticism have been constructive and have improved the things I have written. So has the support and the encouragement. The people who read my blog need not be my censors. At least not always. At least not unless I allow them to be. As for the criticism, it is, as Greenfield points out, better to get that kind of reaction than to be ignored altogether.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Censorship is one way of describing the blawging process. I prefer to think of it as autonomous peer review. If Greenfield ever upgrades his computer server from AOL, maybe he’ll get around to reading mine, too. Consider yourself lucky. BTW, did you know Brian Tannebaum blawgs as well?
Antonin: I suspect Greenfield does read your blog. He probably just doesn’t admit it. But I’ll have to check it out myself.
Gee! I wish I’d said that!
I especially agree about the part where you talk about the impact we have on one another. Since establishing something of a routine (to the extent my ADD allows for such things) of reading what I think of as “the core group,” I believe I’m becoming a better lawyer and more thoughtful — not in the sense of “compassionate,” but in the sense of “one who carefully considers or thinks about things” — person.
Nice post. As Gideon and Brian might say, “I shall bookmark it.”
Mr. Koehler:
As one of the law student readers you refer to (I am a 3l at an East Coast school), I wanted to let you know that I don’t think there is any danger of this blog turning into one of the “tepid and simplistic blogs” that fades away from lack of readership. You cover some very interesting topics that are of enormous relevance to people like me. I also like the tone of the blog and itf it is one sign of a trend toward a “kinder, gentler blogosphere,” then I think that is great. You keep on writing. I’ll keep on reading.
Jamison,
I think The Trial Warrior and Horowitz have it right. We’re not your censors. We provide each other with some peer review and a bit of mutual support. Mostly, we make each other better. Better blawgers, for sure. Better (or at least more thoughtful) lawyers, we can hope.
And, frankly, regardless of why we started, we all do this (or keep doing it) because at some level we can’t really help ourselves. Greenfield and
Cernovich would sneer (so would I), if we called it something like self-actualization, but the blawgs are self-expression. They’re us being us.
In the courtroom, we’re actors, directors, and playwrights. In the blogosphere, we’re all those same things (probably should add “journalist” to the on-line version of the list). Except without physical presence. Here we truly live by just our words. And any censoring, is wholly self-censoring.
We all write for different reasons. I find it odd that we should write for anyone other than ourselves, but then again, when I went to sleep it was a different world. Yes, we wonder what others will think of things we write, but at the end of the day none of these folks are paying our bills or bathing the dog. It’s nice to be read. It’s always nice to be liked. But if you fake it, everyone can tell. So, don’t.
I’m glad to know you. And, I’m glad your endings are stronger than they used to be.
You can write for people. Or you can write for Google.
But you can’t write for both. Writing for Google will destroy both your style and your substance and you won’t be taken seriously.
And if you aren’t writing for people you are less likely to gain links and, therefore, new readers.
Blogging is very counter-intuitive.
A blog is a little like a creative writing workshop. You have your inner circle of readers who are free to criticize and comment on your work. How much credence you give to each individual comment has a lot to do with how much you respect that individual person and his or her work. For example, when, in a college creative writing class, a girl referred to my characters in a short story as “pedestrian” and dismissed them by saying “I really just don’t CARE about them”, I decided she was fat and ugly so who really cared what she thought. (Okay, so I was 19 and not all that mature.) Finally, the only opinion that mattered to me was that of the professor. You, unfortunately, have a lot of “professors” who visit your blog – professionals in your field and fellow bloggers whose opinions you value and trust. Their praise bolsters you and their criticism stings – hence, censors. It’s fine to worry about what they think. But the key to continuing to write free, unfettered and uncensored prose – besides keeping in mind that it is your outer circle that really matters, that broader audience that transcends your inner circle – is to remember one thing about each of your critics: they are probably fat and ugly.
Yeah, what MAB said.
That’s my little sister. Isn’t she great?
Luckily all of my critics are fat and ugly so I universally disregard them.
Since Grits is a public policy blog aimed at political reform and not by/for practitioners, I envision only one audience when writing: The decisionmakers on whatever issue I’m writing about. I’m an advocate and am generally writing to convince someone in government of a particular course of action, so my audience are those empowered to take those actions – often just a handful of people or even one individual. It turns out to be different folks in nearly every post: Legislators, agency boards or administrators, county commissioners, judges, prosecutors, police supervisors, bureaucrats in the court system, whatever. Frequently I specifically email the post to those individuals to make sure they see it. Everyone else is welcome to read (and the method seems to draw readers because Grits sees about 2,000 visitors on weekdays), but I consider their participation essentially voyeurism. To the extent that secondary audience matters to me, it’s only to provide opinion leaders arguments and information they can use in their own advocacy aimed at decisionmakers (for the handful who will ever engage in it). But in my mind’s eye when I’m writing I don’t consider them.
Never write for Google. For starters, their algorithm is secret so you’re only guessing what will boost your Google rank. Also, considering I never think of Google when writing, my Google page rank is 6 (the biggest TX daily newspapers are 7), so I don’t think the method harms Grits’ search engine status much. Write quality stuff, publish regularly, and the Google rank will take care of itself.
Scott: Although I am fat and ugly, I do not include myself among your critics. As always, it’s an honor to have you commenting on this site.
I understand what you, Turk and others say about Google. And I agree that blogs written specifically for Google are worthless to read. But I do think you can write interesting posts that are also SEO-friendly. I would name at least one blog that I read in which the author acknowledges thinking about SEO. But I’m not sure the author would appreciate the mention in that context.