Enfin

After a week of analyzing the Running a Hospital blog, I still don't understand how people have time to work a full-time job and blog. Paul Levy manages to provide at least one blog entry every day. I am a grad student, and I find forcing myself to blog daily to be too time consuming.

One of the things I do appreciate about the blog format is its simplicity. Every time you open up the blog, there is blank slate available for creation on any topic. On Levy's blog, blog posts regularly turn into a conversation on health care issues. Rather than someone dictating how it should be, it is a bunch of people discussing positive solutions, or at least attempting to do so.

Levy's blog is pretty plain in design, but it feels right for him. A busy hospital CEO shouldn't be overly concerned about fancy design. In this case, he chose a standard template without adding on any extra features or details. If this were the CEO of a marketing firm (Todd Defren or AJ Gerritson) or some other creative position, one might expect a little more flair with the blog. But in this case, I think simplicity sends the right message.

I actually do enjoy blogging, but I would never force myself to keep up a daily routine. At least, I wouldn't if it was intended as an after hours hobby. The creation of a blog post shouldn't be forced. The blog itself is very much a cool medium, as media critic Marshall McLuhan would say. It is a pastiche, to borrow a term from the post-modern movement, of styles and genres that coalesce into a fuzzy picture of references and meanings--created not only by the author, but anyone who chooses to join the discussion.

In a sense, there is never a finished product. So much of the blog world is deriving and understanding meaning, and then applying your own meaning to what you have read. A post is always evolving through comments, updates and changing realities. Every new interpretation builds up or can cancel out previous meanings.

The great thing about blogs is it is a place where people can be brutally honest and discuss anything they want. In the case of the most recent posts on Running a Hospital, it can shed light on important topics, like health care rankings, or it can just be a fun diversion into the inane, like discussions about water. It is a place for media to dance in the moonlight, shimmering in the reflective glow of our own personal sun.

As for me, there is probably a blog in my future. Just don't ask me to review blogs for a living.