A Voice Post on Rod Adams of Nuclear Insights

The voice of a writer may seem at first glance a very simple concept. Whatever you write is whatever you think, you just create the idea in your head and then you type or you pick up your pencil and voila, the writer's voice. I have come to realize, though, through studying writers in high school and college and through writing my own stuff and having it (sometimes brutally :)) critiqued, that the voice of a writer is a carefully thought out, crafted and marketed commodity. The voice comes from the thought of the writer, his or her perspective on the world, their history and past, their feelings about their topic and their level of familiarity with it. It also includes some respect paid to the audience they are writing to and the effect they hope to have on that audience. A writer hoping to interest teenagers in the latest vampire romance novel would quite obviously have a very different voice than an author writing an article on Franz Marc for the art issue of the Atlantic Monthly; but that difference comes from conscious choice and careful editing.
With these ideas in mind, I had been reading some of Rod Adam's latest postings on his blog "Atomic Insights." He is writing for an educated audience, an audience interested in a pretty specific set of issues, namely those of nuclear energy and application of nuclear science. He is also writing for a group of people who already have some kind of exposure to this material. He especially depends on exposure in a current events context. He writes not necessarily about nuclear history, but about modern-day dilemmas and uses of nuclear research. While I am educated and can keep up with him in an academic sense, I am not very plugged in to that last criteria. But it says a lot for his voice as a writer that he manages to make himself understood. He writes clearly and passionately, showing some penchant for the run-on sentence but making his points nonetheless.
He also talks as though he is with you in your home, with a good fire going, with a good beer, having these conversations. In one post he writes about the nuclear energy company Exelon, he divulges the information in the post like it's something that's been bothering him for a long time and he just has to tell someone. He uses pop culture references, opening the post with a small introduction to the concept of "friending" on Facebook, which helps to make his posts current, and keep them out of the realm of "boring" academia. Even though this particular post was a little on the long side, he stayed cleanly on point and provided strong evidence for all the claims he made.
In an interesting counterpoint to this post, was his post about Sweden's efforts to step up their nuclear energy program. This post is quite short, gives only one link as support for his information, and otherwise relies wholly on his own personal knowledge and his persona as a writer. An interesting addition to that persona (the educated yet friendly and approachable upper middle class nuclear energy guy) is an almost teenaged attitude. Even the title of the post, "Sweden may finally acknowledge what many observers have known for years," betrays a flippant personality that only someone who is intimately connected with his subject could get away with. I think that this is interesting and funny, but also potentially dangerous as it could intimidate shier readers or anger others. Perhaps others who happen to be from Sweden.
In conclusion, though, Mr. Adam's blog is clearly marketed for a specific audience, but he does an effective job of reaching out to that group, largely through his intelligence and knowledge, but also through the way he presents his information; his voice as a writer.