Day of truth

Since I started this blog - Saturday, January 23 – one week has passed. 7 days, 7 blog posts. This was our task. Now I can reveal it:

Why I started blogging

“We” are a group at the University of Dortmund taking the course “United States Presidential Election, 2008: U.S. Political Culture and New Media” (English is my minor) held by a young teacher, Svetlana Makeyeva, who is specialized on blogging.

One part of the seminar is this blogging project – start an own blog and for one week create one post per day.

I was a blogo-skeptic

To be honest, the idea didn’t amaze me at all. I didn’t want to be forced to start a blog. I wanted to continue not having anything to do with blogs. When doing research on the internet – privately or as a student of journalism – I left website when noticing that it was “only from a private person”. I didn’t want to rely on this information and instead looked for homepages of organizations, universities, well-known experts or even better, spoke to someone personally.

But I “had to” do it…

I was in this seminar, I did not want to drop it, so I told myself to just see this project as any other homework and just do it. I refused however blogging about anything I wasn’t interested in so I planned to combine it with my major journalistic. I thought about why I don’t like blogs. Because they are unprofessional “wanna-be journalists” threatening our future career. There I had my concept: I could face blogosphere for a week, see how I feel about it then and on top of that inform myself about the current situation between journalists and bloggers and its future outlook. And I started liking the idea…

“Feels good!”

I created the blog choosing name and layout, edited my profile and posted the introduction. Then the first comments of my colleagues came (it was part of the project to comment each others’ blogs) and I have to admit that it felt quite good reading that they liked my idea and were eager to read my following posts. Then I told myself “The next one mustn’t disappoint them.” And when I read other’s blogs I sometimes thought to myself “Hum, his/hers seems more professional or appealing” and then I wondered what I could change about mine to improve it.

Means:
I developed a personal connection to “my blog”, personalized it more and more and wanted it to be as good as possible. Also, I felt a certain “responsibility” towards my readers.

“Damn, have I chosen a job that will soon be history?!”

My second blog post on the history and development of the conflict between bloggers and journalists put me into a crisis. I started wondering if we really had to take bloggers more seriously as concurrence. It seemed like our future was quite uncertain, dark somehow. Rosenberg’s judgement that it was the journalists’ own fault as they failed in settling down in blogosphere.

Rebecca Blood’s point of view calmed me down again. She, although fascinated by blogs demonstrating a lot of advantages they have, made clear that blogs and journalism are two different things which cannot replace each other.

“Let’s give them back!”

After the two blog posts in which I presented the point of view of two bloggers I just had to collect some hardcore arguments from journalists against bloggers – to establish equality but also to feel better. I soon noticed, however, that it was a repetition of the same arguments all the time – blogger’s write gossip, they are arrogant towards journalists, they are not professional and don’t orient themselves at quality standards and they act irresponsibly. Apparently, journalists don’t have that many points to criticize bloggers with.
Even I can tell that there are not only gossip blogs and arrogant? Tja, I would say they have the right to criticize traditional media and consider themselves an alternative source for information.
When it comes to professionalism and quality, I agree with the journalists’ skepticism.

“Ooops, they are much further…”

I was quite surprised but mostly relieved when I understood that the debate about journalists and bloggers is actually over. I liked to hear that they are not only co-existing but even cooperating - journalists start blogging and use information provided by bloggers and bloggers start doing journalism and hire people.

Young journalists stay cool

Finally, I was curious to know how familiar other journalism students were with blogosphere, if they were rather positive or negative towards it and what imagination they had of the future.
It was relieving to see that most of them were not much more experienced with blogging then I. The best was, however, that they weren’t afraid of blogosphere ruining their future.

My newly shaped opinion

Blogs have come to stay, they are not just some temporary trend that will disappear sooner or later.

There are uncountable nonsense, gossip and ego-boost blogs but also highly informative, interesting and entertaining ones written by motivated and talented bloggers. It is however not always easy to find those.

Blogging is not journalism just because a professional journalist writes it – the editorial level is missing, the gatekeepers. Blogs that hire reporters and cling to quality standards on the contrary can in my opinion be journalism. All the other privately blogging persons do definitely not produce journalistic products even if they cover notable events in newspaper style.

People (not everyone, of course ) will always want to be informed about what is going on in this world that is becoming more and more complicated (globalization, technology…). Nowadays we can easily get information on happenings in almost any corner of the world. I think, people will be thankful for professionals to inform them about the most generally relevant (relevance of topics is of course subjective) events. Blogs are a great complementing source for extra information on topics people are individually interested in but the endless blogosphere makes it almost impossible for a single person to select the most important information day by day.

I am looking positively towards my future again, but have opened up for blogging and meanwhile see more advantages about it than threats.

Thanks for that, Svetlana!***

P.S: And, no, I will definitely not shut down MY blog now that the project is over but keep it and update it whenever I feel for it.

Yours,
Johanna*