Blog talk in Richmond

At the James River Writer’s Festival next week, there will be a panel about blogs. Here is (part of) an article from Style Weekly this week:
Writing on the Wall
James River Writers Conference addresses the blog and other matters of writing.
by Valley Haggard
September 14, 2005
There is no avoiding them, from the coffee shop down the street to your own back yard. People are no longer hiding their beast beneath the surface, but are brimming with ulterior motives, turns of phrase and plays on words clever enough to titillate the toughest imagination. Poets, authors, screenwriters, editors, agents, bloggers and literary types of every ilk are infiltrating the streets of Richmond and will multiply come the end of September, when the James River Writers hosts its annual conference. For the first time, the conference will address bloggers and the industry of Internet publication. A diverse panel of established and up-and-coming bloggers will form the panel “Everyone’s Blogging — Should You?” moderated by Caroline Kettlewell, local author of “Electric Dreams” and a JRW board member. She plans to address such questions as: Is this the wave of the future, or is it just people mouthing off into cyberspace? Does blogging have legitimacy, or is it just a rash young thing? And, what is the evolving purpose and function of blogging?

Ron Hogan, creator of Beatrice.com, an online format for author interviews, books and the publishing industry since 1995, and author of the soon-to-be-released “The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane,” receives more than 100,000 visits to his blog per month. But Hogan promises that the Internet is no competition for the printing press.

“The printed word isn’t in danger of disappearing anytime soon — certainly not at the level of the book,” Hogan says. “The idea that the Internet will kill the printed word is about as accurate as the idea that TV will kill radio or that cable will kill the networks or that home video will kill the cineplex.”

Hogan believes that literary blogs fill a niche for people who are looking for a meaningful discussion of literature but are unable to find it in the mainstream media. “This is especially true for genres like mystery and science fiction or, at the more literary end, poetry and literature-in-translation that gets very little, if any, mainstream coverage,” he says.

While the bloggers make their debut, the JRW Conference embarks on its third year Sept. 30 to Oct. 1 at the Library of Virginia.