The Source
From Marcelo Somers (via Jim Dalrymple)
Our job as independent writers isn’t to be first or even to get the most pageviews. It’s to answer the question of “so what?”. Taken as a whole, our sites should tell a unique story that no one else can, with storylines that develop over time that help bring order to the chaos of what we cover.
This is exactly what goes through my head when I post to Daily Exhaust.
There’s many times the link I want to link to and quote is already linked to and quoted by John Gruber, Jim Dalrymple, Shawn Blanc, Jason Kottke, Ben Brooks or someone I found on Techmeme. If I don’t have a unique perspective to the link in question, I usually won’t link to it. I don’t want to be the noise in the conversation.
I try to do the same with the images I post. While it’s tempting to get caught up in the whatever’s popular on Tumblr at the moment, I try to post my own designs, photography and scans.
Writing original content and posting original imagery makes me a source, not just just another reblogger of other peoples’ stuff. Sure it’s more work, but it’s worth it.