Jory Des Jardin, one of the founders of BlogHer, on the value of producing original content:
I get bored with blog content that simply riffs off of other content, even though there are content providers who do very well with this tactic. Let’s be realistic: we need interpreters and evaluators of original content, but I didn’t begin blogging with an eye toward keywords to embed, or A-List bloggers to emulate, in my content; I did it to extract ideas that I suspected I had, but that I hadn’t given a chance to manifest. Hopefully, some of these ideas would be needed.
Des Jardin is a smart person and her personal take on blogging is valued by me, and I’m sure many others. There’s no need to challenge her, but I do wonder where the idea of community is in this view of blogging. Where is the “markets are conversations” concept? Is that concept false? Or is it real? If it’s real–and I think it is real in some cases–then the objective is not the production of original content. Rather in community-centric structures the idea is to talk, to share ideas, to learn. Together.
Given her creation of BlogHer, I imagine Des Jardin lives and breathes community. Yet, she is burdened by the need to create original content for her blog, which by its very nature is the solitary work of a writer. As a writer myself, I share her need to create original content. But I’m not convinced a multi-channel interactive space is the perfect home for it.