Writing a blog is like writing a book: you can aim directly for your audience (first that’s you; after that it’s everyone else who will read it). In contrast, if you write for a newspaper or a magazine or a scientific journal, you’re writing for the editor. I hate writing for the editor. Editors can be great, but it’s such an indirect process. I remember back when I was writing for the Monkey Cage, the political science blog, and it got absorbed by the Washington Post. Which was great–we reached a broader audience–but then we had an editor, who was a nice person but kept telling me that my posts were too bloggy. Which they were–I’m sure the editor was correctly judging what would work for a Washington Post product–but I absolutely hated not being able to write directly. The prospect of more readers wasn’t worth the unpleasantness of having to write in a style that wasn’t mine, and the degradation of the quality of the writing and of the ideas being expressed under such a style.