Journalism

After wading through thousands of unread emails on my laptop with a signal to noise ratio of around 1 to 3,000, I couldn't help but ponder who was sending me what and what I wasn't reading - and why.

Granted, my lifestyle has changed. What most people consider to be 'new technology' seems to be a boring reiteration of the last 22 years of 'new technology' with the exception of the Internet. Because of that, and because I have grown so bored with the same old ideas being rehashed (a list would be insanely long), I don't read messages as often as I used to. If I were egocentric, I would say that it is because I have grown beyond the well intended scribblings and commentaries on the Internet about everything from electrical engineering to social media abstractions. And yet, too, it would seem egocentric to write that everyone else is at such a boring level of interest. Perhaps it would be more appropriate, honest and less egocentric to write that I have become jaded by the constant barrage of 'new and exciting' technologies, ideas and even humor that others feel the need to bestow upon the collective. Here I am, blogging, and I must wonder even at the worth of what I write.

Would that more people wondered at the worth of what they write.

For centuries, writers have experimented with forms that evoke the imperfection of thought, the inconstancy of human affairs, and the chastening passage of time. But as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that’s enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral, and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake: it heralds a golden era for journalism.

— Andrew Sullivan

When I read Andrew Sullivan's article, 'Why I Blog', I was interested to find out why he blogs. While his well written explanation of a ship's log holds true, I don't know that one would feel as if one was 'going backwards in time' when reading it. If you read a log from front to back, you progress through time and move forward. Unless, of course, you read from the back of the book. Maybe he knows something I don't. The world is full of things I don't know. But I have read logs, and they always seem to move forward.

A weblog, however, does go backward because of the way it is presented. The first page of the log is constantly shifting to be the last page written. If you try this with physical writing you'll find that there is a mechanical problem when writing in a log book: You can't add pages at the front.

While I've been reading We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age, I've had to take breaks to ponder some things before I write a book review. This post really isn't about the book, instead it is about what I've been considering. Honestly, I haven't thought that much about it. I typically write what I see or think, I sometimes write about other people but most of the time decide not to as to be credible I would want to quote. People, despite what social networking folk seem to think, enjoy their privacy.

I've mistakenly thought that the 'Freedom of the Press', as noted in the United States, was consistent - the book demonstrates that this is not the case and even lead me to ponder why it is that 'the press' has more rights than the average person on the planet. For example, why is it that sometimes a journalist can get away with not divulging sources but the average person is more likely to be held in contempt of a Court for the same. It makes little sense to me, and while the author of the book took me down his own (thorough) chain of thought, I'm still wondering why it is that the media was even given rights - poorly defined rights - in the Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.