The New York Times is Jill Abramson's Personal Blog Diary

03puppy1-ready-popup.jpg
This weekend's New York Times Public Editor column is like stubbing your toe, bending over to check on it and smashing your head into a doorknob on the way down. You just have to laugh. It's about "blogs." What's the deal with them, anyway? A grizzled newspaper veteran from the Providence Journal wants to know. He doesn't like them! And that word... blog, "whatever that is supposed to mean." We should go "back to simply putting out the newspaper," he writes.

But Times editor Jill Abramson is defensive.

Blogs are informative, less formal, but crucial in keeping up with "a fast-paced story with many different tentacles," like health care or the French Open, she says. But Times standards are Times standards, blog or not. "Times blogs are never personal diaries," she insists. Except one time, for a year, Abramson wrote a Times "series" about her dog. It was called "The Puppy Diaries."

Maybe she forgot that this happened.

But probably not, considering the entire point of the blog (that's what it was, right?) -- a chronicle of her puppy Scout's first year of life -- was to keep a public scrapbook, complete with "photographs and videos as she and her husband, Henry Griggs, take Scout from puppyhood to her first birthday." This really happened! It sounds like a "personal diary." It is titled "Diary." Many would call it a blog.

Abramson might say, well many Times readers have dogs -- "more than 45 million households" -- and "raising a puppy has become an essential part of American life." But... but...

Here is a selection from the final installment of "The Puppy Diaries":

On her birthday we celebrated with a yogurt-frosted dog biscuit at the farm. We invited our friend, Barbara, and her puppy, Xena, who was born two weeks after Scout.

Blog, blog blog.


My Voice Nation Help
0 comments
Sort: Newest | Oldest

From the Vault

 

©2013 Village Voice, LLC, All rights reserved.
Browse Voice Nation
  • Voice Places New York

    Voice Places

    Find everything you're looking for in your city

  • Happy Hour App

    Happy Hour App

    Find the best happy hour deals in your city

  • Daily Deals

    Daily Deals

    Get today's exclusive deals at savings of anywhere from 50-90%

  • Best Of

    Best Of...

    Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city