Just been pointed to blog-a-thon-you by Simon where there are two full reviews of plasticbag.org.
The first thing you learn at journalism school is how when you write a review you are always writing for an audience. You write something that you believe would make sense to your readership – not necessarily to yourself. That’s where the skill in reviewing comes – in divorcing your own particular obsessions (or at least disguising them) from the ‘useful service’ that you are actually trying to provide. I mean, if I loved ‘Graffitti Bridge’ but because I’d studied the semiotics of ‘Prince’ for ten years, I still shouldn’t give it a good review for those people who are looking for an evening’s entertainment. Proper reviews also depend upon building a relationship of trust between you and your readership – which means that you really should try and spell everything properly, and get your grammar right.
But of course, you don’t have to write a ‘proper review’ in order to express your opinion. In fact you can write whatever you like. But of course, unlike a proper review (where what you write is thought-through, intelligent, built for an audience and literate) with a personal opinion there’s almost no limit to the range of entertaining and appropriate responses. You can stick your tongue out, wave your arse in the air, write nasty songs involving rhymes for ‘shunts’ or indeed even respond with a counter review.
Or you can, of course, just completely ignore it.