Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

On Monday, we devoted a post-supper post to Trevor Butterworth's weekend rant in the Financial Times wherein "the dismal fate of blogging" was revealed. Instead of refuting Butterworth's "end-of-days" theory here, which would be far too tedious, we'll focus on one person and one blog as an example of what the new medium's got going for itself and why its future is quite the opposite of dismal. The defence calls Grant Barrett.

Grant Barrett works as a lexicographer for Oxford University Press in New York City. Along with being project editor for the Historical Dictionary of American Slang and editor of the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, he is also vice president for communications and technology for the American Dialect Society. His blog is titled "The Lexicographer's Rules" and it functions as a complement to the superb "Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary", which he calls "A Growing Dictionary of Old and New Words from the Fringes of English".

All Barrett's good work on the far reaches of the language — both pixel and print — will come together at the end of April, when McGraw-Hill publishes "The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English" — "More than 750 brand-new words that make 'bling-bling' sound so five minutes ago", as the blurb puts it.

Even a casual reading of "The Lexicographer's Rules" shows how valuable a tool the blog is now in Barrett's line of work. The medium allows for global research, presentation and feedback; the only limitations are time and imagination. Trevor Butterworth's argument that blogging is failed journalism and bloated opinion is simply absurd when you look at what the likes of Grant Barrett are doing with the technology. Tomorrow, we call as our witness an offspring of blogging that's all set to change how we hear radio and get newsletters — RSS. Not surprisingly, Trevor Butterworth didn't mention it in his article.