Blog is such an ugly word

I’ve never liked the word blog. It sounds like some weird, gross medical condition you’d feel embarrassed to tell people about. 

(Image by: Krystle Richardson)

Aesthetics aside, there’s no denying blogs, and social media in general, have fundamentally changed journalism. What was once a predominantly one way system is now a collaborative enterprise; and the immediacy of the web means the public can have their say without having to sit down and bash out a letter to the editor. While there are obvious benefits to the increased access journalists now have to their audience (and vice versa), you have to wonder how it affects the quality of what’s being spread. The same immediacy which is so alluring can also be quite worrying. Blog posts don’t have to be approved by an editor and there is rarely any standard to be met for comments to be publically visible. Not that I’m advocating censorship but people are frighteningly carefree about posting death threats these days. Those posting these threats may know they’re idle but that doesn’t exactly provide peace of mind for the people who have been targeted (including journalists and even a 6 year-old).  

Social media driven, reciprocal journalism is still quite new though. Blogs only really took off within the last decade and facebook was only made fully available to the public in 2006, the same year twitter was launched. Each wave of new journalists will, hopefully, have a clearer view of the problems and be able to find ways to absorb and work around them. 

In the end, whether you’re a blogophile or blogophobe, there’s no fighting the massive online tide (unless you want to start taking Chuck Palahniuk novels a little too seriously and get all anarchistic). And even though technology has changed the game, the words of Charles Darwin still apply:

"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment."

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”