Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

No, we're not revisiting Trevor Butterworth's Financial Times piece on blogging; well, not directly, but it is worth noting that heavyweight New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell is now blogging. Why? Well here's his reasoning:

In the past year I have often been asked why I don't have a blog. My answer was always that I write so much, already, that I don't have time to write anything else. But, as should be obvious, I've now changed my mind. I have come (belatedly) to the conclusion that a blog can be a very valuable supplement to my books and the writing I do for the New Yorker. What I think I'd like to do is to use this forum to elaborate and comment on and correct and amend things that I have already written. If you look on my website, on the "Blink" page, you'll see an expanded notes and bibliography, which mostly consists of copies of emails sent to me by readers. Well, I think I'd like to start posting reader comments for everything I write, and this is a perfect place for that. There are also times when I think I've made mistakes, or oversights, and I'd like to use this space to explain myself and set things right. Let me give you a small, immediate example. In my October 10th article for the New Yorker, "Getting In" I quoted from a fascinating study done a few years ago on the graduates of the elite Hunter College elementary school in Manhattan. But I didn't get give the title of the book or its authors. Why? Well, the New Yorker is not an academic publication: we don't footnote every source the way people do in scholarly journals. There are all kinds of things that any of us who write for the New Yorker read and that influence our writing but that we never acknowledge, because we don't run bibliographies at the end of articles. That's a constraint of the popular magazine business, and whether sources get mentioned is up to the judgment of writers and editor. In this case, though, I think I erred. I quoted from the book. I should have referenced it.

Makes sense, that. But why did Gladwell opt for white text on a black background? Doesn't make sense, that.