Here's the thing about blogging from the iPhone: it's a completely different experience from what I'm used to. On the whole, I'm a link heavy blogger and being forced into creating unlinked content is uncomfortable. Sure, I could manually create the links in the iPhone MT interface, but the barrier to doing it is just too high for me to be bothered. Students of publishing might like to notice the similarity with many CMSes deployed in large companies...
So, I'm forced into a more creation-oriented style of blogging; producing original content rather than "link and react" style posts. Ironically, that's pretty much what journalists do when they first start blogging anyway. I couldn't use the iPhone as my primary blogging tool, because I enjoy "link and react" too much.
But I can also see it playing a major part in the workflow of a journalistic blogger who specialises in reporting. It's light, flexible and allows you to post words and pictures wherever you can get a mobile signal. You can publish, junk and reply to comments easily through the interface. And you can also retroactively add links and other details once you get to a more conventional computer.
Beyond that, I quite like the writing focus a "one thing at a time" device like the iPhone gives you. I can only have one application open at a time, so I'm not being distracted by e-mail, Twitter or anything else. This post is longer than my average blog post soley for that reason.
I've read people suggesting that your blog platform will affect the way you blog, because the areas if the interface that are east to use will encourage you to focus on those tasks - and those parts that are hard will make you more inclined to shy away from them. Using my normal Movable Type install through a whole different interface is leading me to blog in a different way, too.
That suggests that we need to be more sophisticated in our thinking about the kind of kit we give digital journalists. If you want conversational, link-based blogging, give journalists a good laptop, somewhere comfortable to sit and a plentiful supply of coffee. If you want them doing original reporting in the field - give them the lightest, fastest tool you can. And the iPhone is pretty damn good for that.
Leave a comment