New Media Meets Old

 

Today I picked up a copy of the September issue of America’s Civil War and was happy to see inside a few examples of cross-media pollination.

Now, in no way am I equating “new” and “old” with “good” and “bad”.  I view web projects (blogs) as different from print media (magazines), not necessarily better, and perhaps compatible.  America’s Civil War is making an attempt to incorporate the blogosphere in its pages, I think in an effective manner.

In March 2007 the magazine included an article on Civil War blogs in general and now includes a review in brief of a featured Civil War blog (including this one) in each issue.  And in the July issue, America’s Civil War ran a piece summarizing several posts from this very blog.  This trend is continued in the September issue.

In the Letters section on page 6, Bruce Allardice expands on his research conducted in response to my ruminations on the similar names of a Super Bowl MVP and a Confederate staff officer.  This letter was born of one posted here by Mr. Allardice.

These posts by the happiest ranger in the National Park Service, Mannie Gentile, are featured on page 12 of the Open Fire! section.  It includes a photo and quotes from the blog posts, as well as a link to the site. Blogger Brian Dirck’s A. Lincoln Blog is profiled on page 14.

The most pleasant surprise of all is the feature article on page 48, “Damage Done to My Farm” by the afore-mentioned Ranger Gentile.  It consists of annotations of 11 documents, illustrations and photographs associated with the Roulette Farm on the battlefield of Antietam.  The magazine offers an expanded online article here, and you can read Mannie’s take on the experience here.  I’m a big fan of Mannie’s blog, in no small part due to his skillful and, more important, economical use of words.  I previously drafted Ranger Gentile to contribute an article to the Save Historic Antietam Foundation’s newsletter, which I now edit.  Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of him in print.