Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

Well, the T&T press--or, at least, two journalists at the Guardian, Laura Dowrich & Mark Lyndersay--have finally caught on to the blogging phenomenon. They separately contacted me within the last fortnight or so, & after initially attempting to stonewall them both, I agreed to be "interviewed" (that sounds almost glam, but I did no more than talk to Dowrich a few times on the phone & answer an email questionnare sent me by Lyndersay). I haven't bothered to figure out why I was the blogger they chose to contact (oh, maybe that's it), & I did attempt to deflect their attention by referring them to Damien & Jonathan, but nonetheless there I am in the Guardian's lead feature today--or at any rate there is someone claiming to be NL, nattering on in an unfamiliar idiolect:

Keeping a blog can be a time-consuming process, as some local bloggers discovered. Nicholas Laughlin, 27, started blogging last October, but gave it up because the demands on his time was too much.

"I realised I spent much too much time online. My Internet usage was high. I said I am too busy for this, it wasn't worth the investment," he said.

His site (nicholaslaughlin.blogspot.com) was Caribbean in perspective and centred on Laughlin's interests in literature and art....

Laughlin began blogging after reading an article on blogging software which promised that he, too, could be a blogger in three minutes.

(At least this supposed NL accurately remembers his age, something I don't always manage.)

I've decided to take the whole thing as a kind of practical lesson in the dangers of publicity, & the alarming reductiveness of the soundbite. I've been interviewed by a newspaper just once before, I think (no link--this was in the pre-WWW era); & then as now I was astonished that what had seemed a fluent, amusing, enlightening conversation could be converted by the process of transcription & a sub-editor's attentions into a handful of dud phrases lying lifeless on the page, like stones for the stubbing of readers' toes.

And I still have Mark Lyndersay's Bit Depth column to look forward to tomorrow....

The real issue, of course, is whether mentions in two Guardian articles will mean a spike in my visitor stats.

Not yet.