Blogging Off Steam
“Blogging . . . offers journalists instant gratification at little cost. . . . Journalists love doing this in part because over the years they have been pushed to squeeze more and more of the viewpoint and analysis out of their writing in the name of objectivity. So the blog lets them cut loose. It gives them a satisfaction that’s hard to get from doing original reporting, and it’s much easier than doing original reporting as well. And it lets them feel like they’re part of a community, ‘the blogosphere.’”
—Mark Gimein, business journalist and some-time blogger, 2007
Editorial Comment: Filling those empty retirement hours, when you've lost your old, real community...
This quote is so true, I have a blog entirely dedicated to my engagement, I mean seriously nobody wants to read that stuff except maybe my mom and my fiance's mom. I think blogging gives the author the opportunity to write in a journal that the world can see and comment on if they feel so inclined. It gives people the opportunity to express their opinions without doing so in a public place where they can be mocked or ridiculed.
ReplyDeleteI've certainly not detected any "push...over the years" to squeeze viewpoint and analysis out of reporting....To me, aged 78 and a journalist all my life (played in the back-shop at my dad's country weekly at age 6), the trend has been in the other direction, away from objective reporting and toward interpretation if not value judgments.
ReplyDeleteThe instant gratification from blogging is real, no doubt--but not because recent decades have seen any big drive for objective reporting in the MSM; more because it's just a kick to click and send your own deathless prose out into the cybersphere with no evil editor intervening.
Ann