Over at Teekay’s

David Greenberg guestblogs at DanielDrezner.com and discovers blogging isn’t as easy as he thought it’d be. Now he’s sharing what he learned with his old-media audience, in a 1072-word story in today’s Times.

“…blogging is no longer for amateurs or the faint of heart,” he tells us. “Blogging — if it’s done well — has evolved into an all-consuming art” that “requires as much talent as sculpting a magazine feature or a taut op-ed piece.”

So what’s the secret to a good blog?

As I checked other sites for ideas, I now realized that I didn’t need only new information. I needed a gimmick — a motif or a running joke that would keep the blog rolling all week. All of a sudden, I was reading other blogs, not for what they had to say, but for how they said it.

He was forced to embark on his little journey of discovery after sending his host’s traffic numbers plummeting. What did he learn from reading all those blogs?

The best bloggers develop hobbyhorses, shticks and catchphrases that they put into wider circulation.

If you think that this is what makes a blog interesting and keeps its writers and readers engaged, perhaps the conclusion Greenberg drew from his one-week stint at DanielDrezner.com is indeed inevitable:

I’m not cut out for blogging.

Speaking of guestblogging, I’ll be away for a few days and upon my return will start doing precisely that over at EastEthnia. Posting on this blog will be somewhat lighter, but head over to Gordy’s blog to follow my hobbyhorses, shticks and catchphrases.