Some want to read wine reviews. Some want to write wine reviews. Others stick to industry, experiences, videos, whatever. You can’t please all the people all the time, so do what makes you happy.

If there is a measure of “success” on a blog, I’d say the amount of feedback on this post on this blog is a clear indication. Do what you do and have fun doing it.

1) Support for the idea that people should be able to blog for whatever reasons they choose

2) My disappointment at Tanzer’s negative swipe at blogging.

Sorry if there was any confusion!

The type of wine blog I was talking about is those that seek to have a meaningful impact on the writer’s professional life. I was wrong to assume that was almost everyone. But my larger point stands: the audience for wine blogs is small, and that is not a sign that those blogs are hitting home.

For the record, as a strong supporter of both the First Amendment and creative freedom in general, I would not inflict my creative vision on any other writer. Of course you should write whatever you want to write. Even given that, there is no reason anyone in any medium should be reluctant to discuss how to better attract and serve an audience.

I posted a deliberately provocative piece about wine blogging, which I believe lags behind many other forms of blogging in impact. I did it not to scorn other bloggers, but to start a debate on what we, as a community with shared interests, can do to improve the quality of our work. In every other type of writing I’ve done — newspapers, magazines, television — there have always been ongoing discussions about how to improve. Blogging should be no different. You refer to it derogatorily as “navel gazing.” I think of it as professional development.

Evidence of the effect of my posting is here on this comment thread. Your readers are smart, civil, and well informed. They also vividly illustrate one of my points.

Valuable as the content they’ve generated here may be, it’s worth noting that had they posted all of their well-thought-out comments on their own blogs with links — and had those links been reflected in trackbacks on this thread — people would have clicked back and forth to follow the conversation. Literally thousands of additional site visits would have been generated. Additionally, casual readers would have been introduced to a dozen or more blogs they might never have read before.

In other words, an equal amount of insight and labor would have yielded greater returns for the participants in your obviously vibrant community, and for wine blogging in general.

Thank you for taking part in the discussion. I drop by your blog every few days to see what you have to say, and I never fail to appreciate your unique and compelling voice.

Paulo