To blog or not to blog

By Julian Sudre


ARE you the one that squeaked into the game of publishing by some contradictory, perhaps well-oiled means of escaping the editor’s eye and smugly turned around and said you loved the internet?

Films were made for the television and later on for the cinema. There, came a new way to broadcast movies with high-calibre actors that would not do television, simply.
Rapidly a flurry of small-change productions along with its b-list wannabes
would come droning around television shows in the hope to be the next big screen star.
The latter, in particular sparked off the fantasy – more often that not, these days – to get you in the limelight, or to catapult you into the nine days wonder, sometimes.

The internet has generated a myriad of windows of opportunities that could relate to the television these days -- an attempt to touch slightly, if not illusory stardom – by getting everyone on board, regardless of their talents.

So if is television rubbish, so is the internet with their half-baked scribblers that claim to have to say something of great import. Because the Human Rights Act 1998 which came into force on 2 October 2000, for the first time gave citizens specific legal rights, including the right to freedom of expression.
So please, don’t put the blame on bloggers as tabloid journalists are not any better. The only difference is one gets paid to supply gushy-mushy pap, when the other one strives to get a voice in a dog-eat-dog society.
Now, comes the crunch. Why a stamp from university projects your work into publication when you could as well blog it and laugh all the way to the bank? This is a double-edge dilemma. Journalists graduates have to go through loops to get their first publication, to finally get recognised for the work they have been putting in, and the long hours, while they were researching.
Bloggers break down barriers, use the Human Rights Act 1998 and cut to the chase by splashing out their piece, but they’ll get a smaller readership due to the fact they can’t target the bull’s eye -- that is the nationals.
But small doors open to bigger doors. In essence, it is important to try them all, even though most of them are locked. Everyone should stand a fair chance to try but few are selected for their work to be published for the major media outlets. Nonetheless, if they are, they are not necessarily worth their weight in gold.

When it comes to blogging, it is only of interest if the writer is a journalist with some ethics or a blogger who wants to become a journalist with some ethics.