So Rhetorica is one of the oldest, continuously published weblogs. Its earliest iteration began in 1998 as an academic project for my graduate work. It took its present form in March 2002 just before I graduated.
The explanation in the header about a snafu is there in case anyone who remembers the old Rhetorica comes looking for it. And that requires going the Archive.org to find the old content — about the rhetoric of the press-politics relationship in America.
New readers — are there new readers? — get to follow the latest change in my academic career and creative interests: documentary filmmaking (see also Carbon Trace Productions). I’ve been at that since 2014 but only writing about it recently.
The problem with reinvigorating Rhetorica as a retro blog is that I’m no longer confident in my ability to gain readership in a form that’s no longer current. I briefly tried Substack and didn’t like it. I even tried TikTok for mini documentary film reviews leading to hilarious failure. I still use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Blogging just seems so 2004.
But I’ll keep it up. I like to write.
Having a blog myself since 2003 that has gone dormant on and off, I understand the notion that the form is not suited for gaining current readership. I don’t write about political rhetoric either, in these eschatological days.
On the other hand, the magic of RSS means that those of us from the old days may still be reading! I’m not likely to comment, though, as I know very little about documentary filmmaking—I have learned a bit from your posts, but not enough to have, you know, interesting questions for you.
Thanks,
-V.
Hello V, always good to hear from you 🙂 And never hesitate to ask a question because I’ll always find a way to come up with an “answer.” Thanks for continuing to read Rhetorica.