Nobody else to blame...

Virginia Postrel, whose blog I enjoy and writing I envy, touches a nerve for this writer-waanabee concerning ghost writing. This about Katie Couric's supposed blog.

This double standard is an old bugaboo of mine. I don't care when actors, athletes, and CEOs hire ghostwriters, though I do think they should give their ghosts credit, but people who pretend to be journalists and public intellectuals should do their own damn work. [More]

Amen. As blogs start to proliferate on ag websites - not to mention thinly disguised advertorials - the urge to front them with the authenticity of a "real farmer" is strong. The problem is we have very little in the way of a literary tradition in agriculture outside the agrarian sector (which occasionally produce writers of brilliance such as Wendell Berry). Most of us simply survived English classes.

At Farm Journal, our publishers and editors strongly reject the concept of deceptive authorship, but the tide is coming in on this one. The success of blogs as eyeball attractors has increased the pressure for content onto which to hang ads.

Thank goodness the quality of my prose screams: amateur.