The new grass roots: in which five bloggers, based in Seattle, Philadelphia, Portland, Washington, D.C., and New York, provide an inside look at the growing presence of art writing online

Art in America, Nov, 2007 by Peter Plagens

Jahn: Blogs can provide gut reactions while the guts are still reacting, so they're great for sussing out developing stories. A good blogger has a nose for these situations. Still, there are some dangers in this approach, as the comment sections of most blogs, with their mob mentality, don't seem to attract informed opinions. Many of the most influential blogs no longer solicit comments because they lower the level of discussion. Ed's blog seems to be an exception.

Winkleman: In a word, links. Blogs are much faster distributors of information and opinion because of them.

Why can't blogs go further, to the point where there's hardly any discernible difference between artist and critic/commentator, blog and work of art?.

Hackett: Further into what? I want there to be a difference. I'm not the artist. My blog is not a work of art.

Winkleman: That's exactly what Joy Garnett is doing, in my opinion. She's collaging texts in a way that obscures the difference between artist and commentator, blog and work of art. There are a few other blogs that are more "art" than punditry out there already, such as artisticthoughts.blogspot.com, "a blog about the New York artworld, body modification, mythical beasts, getting high, and wanting to die."

Jahn: It's already happening. I particularly like blogger-artist Scott Wayne Indiana's car project (www.youtube. com/watch?v-P261XnBRCd4) in which he buys an old Ford Taurus for 200 bucks and, starting out at midnight on Christmas day, drives south from Portland to see how far he can get.

Fallon/Rosof: We consider our blog a part of our art practice. A lot of our own art has been art-critical in nature. The blog is just an extension of it, except that were now embraced our community as part of our subject.

Green: Let me back up a bit here. Talking about art blogs as if they're all alike and as if they all do the same thing is like talking about magazines as a single whole. The New Yorker is different from People, which is different from the late lamented Weekly World News. Blogs are as different, too. Yes, some blogs are schlocky rumormongers without a lot of credibility. Some--even those written by longtime journalists--make incredibly dumb mistakes. (Writing without an editor ain't easy!)

What scope and degree of editorial control do you exercise over your blog?

Green: I have complete editorial control over Modern Art Notes. MAN is not edited. That's the way 99 percent of blogs are.

Winkleman: I have total editorial control over the content. But I am very hands-off in general when it comes to comments, so long as participants are not insulting others. I keep my own opinions rather philosophical in nature. I read perhaps six to 10 art publications each morning before deciding on what to blog; or I'll reference other blogs almost as frequently as I do more traditional press. The range of topics goes from the Iraq war to whether a scientist taking photographs is an "artist" or not.

Jahn: We don't have an editor currently but the new version of the site will incorporate some copyediting. I provide advice and on very rare occasions put my foot down. After that it's mostly a confederacy of writers who get to do what they want. Beyond that, I check in weekly and coordinate who is covering what and when.