Please don't call this a blog

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When you run a small operation like Trying!, every bit of audience participation matters. If you post a comment on mattgrossistrying.com, I’m thrilled. If you write back to me directly, it’s the highlight of my day. And if you share something I’ve written on a social media platform—even one of the more loathsome ones—then wow. Here I am flinging hundreds of thousands of words out into what could be a digital abyss, yet some of them really do land in your head and your heart, moving you, dear reader, to spread my ideas to your own weird circles. One day, when my cult of personality encircles the globe, I will have you to thank. I will bestow upon you a white robe, and won’t that be cool?

There’s only one thing that people do when they share Trying! pieces—and it’s really only very, very occasionally, almost never in fact, so why am I even bringing this up?—that bothers me. And that’s when they call Trying! a… a… a… a BLOG.

Feh! It sickens me even to type those four letters. It’s an ugly word with ugly implications, and yes, I’m about to tell you why I hate it so much.

To be fair, Trying! does look a little bit like a blog. It is, after all, “writing on the Internet,” which a whole generation of us who were online from, say, 2001 to 2013 came to associate with the term “blog.” That word was at first a relatively new one, a truncation of “web log” because that’s what the writing was originally, and how it was structured—as a log of a person’s writing, the most recent post at the top of the web page, followed by the others in reverse chronology. I don’t remember anyone ever actually saying or writing “web log” except to explain the etymology of “blog,” and as technologies like TypePad and, uh, Blogger made it a cinch to get one up and running, pretty quickly “blog” became the default: Bloggers blogged about blogging on their blogs.

From the beginning, I hated the word. First off, it sounds awful, combining the noncommittal boredom of “blah” with the foul, miasmic sludge of “bog.” Nothing about that is good. And the repetition of “blog” in media coverage only made it worse, like the endless belches of an old man subsisting on hot dogs. Blog blog blog blog blog!

But even its “log” root was problematic for me, suggesting that these were nothing more than unimaginative, diary-like logs of their creators lives. Which was not the case at all! Many of the early 2000s blogs were thoughtful, lively, and well-crafted, pushing writers like Mickey Kaus, Glenn Reynolds, and Andrew Sullivan into the public eye, followed soon after by Gawker, Wonkette, and Deadspin. To reduce their arguments, storytelling, and stylistic innovations to a mere log of events was an insult.

That insult, however, became de rigueur. Because blogs were so easy to launch, and because their voices were so often free-wheeling, they became seen as somehow “less than” traditional journalism, even when they were reported, written, and edited by classically trained journalists as often as by talented neophytes. A respected newspaper or magazine might publish its stories online; it might also have a blog or two (or twenty) whose writers would work just as hard and write just as well, but never enjoy the stature or salary of their non-blogging colleagues. This was frustrating, sure, but it was also liberating: If bloggers were going to be underpaid and underconsidered, they might as well go buck wild.

This was the era in which I, too, blogged. For the New York Times, I wrote the Frugal Traveler column, which became a blog during the summer, when I’d travel the world and write a weekly entry that solicited feedback and tips from readers. And not long after my daughter, Sasha, was born, some friends and I created Dadwagon, one of a wave of parenting blogs then saturating the Internet. Both of those were very much blogs, full of voice, engaged with their audiences, and often recording what had happened since the last entry. I loved writing them, and I put every bit as much energy, rigor, and research into them as I did into the work I produced for actual, physical newspapers and magazines.

Yet the blog stain remained. Years in, blogs still seemed to be regarded as less than other forms of journalism, especially by the media bosses who made so many stupid, industry-ruining decisions in the first two decades of this millennium. They could not see this style of writing as descended from an earlier era of columnists, nor could they understand the power of what bloggers did, except as an adjunct to the stodgier work of more esteemed reporters.

Yes, I internalized a lot of this. I may be proud of the blogging I did, but I wince to hear it described as such, because I know that so many readers still see the word “blog” and dismiss the work as slapdash and disposable, ephemeral ravings that can be easily ignored because they will be replaced the next day with another log entry. (As if this was not already the definition of daily newspaper journalism!) I did not and do not want my work to be thought of that way, so please, don’t call Trying! a blog.

What is Trying!, then? If you’re reading this in your inbox, then you already know: It’s a newsletter. Again, not a great term, evoking PTA mimeographs and the quarterly mailings of underfunded nonprofits, destined for the recycling. But at least it’s not “eNewsletter,” the term of choice for one of my now former colleagues. Better, perhaps, to think of it as an email from me, Matt Gross, to you, a valued subscriber, in which I write thoroughly and thoughtfully about the issues and ideas I know we both find fascinating. Okay, fine, the ones that I find fascinating—although I hope that you wind up sharing my fascinations, and that you suggest topics for me to take on.

And if “newsletter” and “email” don’t do it, then just call these essays, and label Trying! an essay project, an ongoing effort to take my thoughts and experiences and transform them into something more than just a reverse-chronological catalog of the days and nights of Matt Gross. As Michel de Montaigne, the essay’s inventor, wrote in 1580, “I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray.” For Montaigne, the essay was very literally an essai—an attempt—to look inside oneself with honesty and good faith, never knowing until the words were written and rewritten what one had found. In that sense, whether a Trying! essay turns out to be a narrative, an analysis, a travelogue, a Q&A, a work of criticism, a blend of fact and fiction, a rant, or a dream, it is always, in the end, just me trying. It’s all I can do. It’s all any of us can do.

And if even that doesn’t work for you, if it’s finally too abstruse to explain to your squash buddies or your book club or the college cohort growing ever more distant, then just call it what it really, truly is: “a Substack, but on Beehiiv.” Everyone knows what that means. 🪨🪨🪨

It’s Good and I Like It: Barry Yeoman: Unabridged

My old friend Barry Yeoman has a great newsletter—you should read it.

Read a Previous Attempt: How I traveled 20 years ago