Well, to take a more professionally-focused angle on the topic, I just launched (after I got back from Minnesota) an intranet k-log or knowledge log at Headline News to go with a series of writing seminars held by the copyeditors. The seminar leaders provided me with a lot of material to put up on the blog, and I used Movable Type. But I have run into the same issues Emily describes, stuff that phil also talks about on his "a klog apart" site. For a great many of my colleagues, all of whom are professional writers with varying tasks depending on their job descriptions, participating in more dialogic writing is a major shift.

I should add that the entire building here has a history of being late to interactive technology. Old timers tell me they never saw the Web at all in the building, and then only on just a few machines, until 1996. Boggles your mind, doesn't it?

A lot of folks spend their time in a more obtuse README system in a mainframe system that houses all the TV scripts and wirecopy feeds, so that may be part of it too.

But I am also noting--since the klog is designed for people to talk about their craft, writing, and aspects of that craft and lore that ease the training of new people, allow folks to move up-- that even tho these folks are writers, they really don't have a vocabulary for talking about writing issues. They can talk about journalistic issues, details of stories, etc. Even copyeditors have to struggle to know how to give writers good feedback that will enable them to write better stories that need less copyediting.

So Emily, I'm wrestling with the same stuff. Maybe here we can try to find ways to figure out why it happens, if not take steps to ease the barriers to discussion on the blogs.

Chris