The social network of backofthebook.ca, Canada's online magazine
It’s a Blog Blog World
The online community has seen its user-generated content grow in the last few years, and nowadays it seems like everyone and their dog has a blog. People are backing up their stories and anecdotes by citing, “I read it online”, oftentimes not realizing where their information is coming from.
Opinion pages, editorials and letters to the editor have long been a way for people to express their views about politics, current events, civics, and other touchy topics. The world of the blog is far less formal. And thank God for that.
User-generated content has been around for as long as the internet, and has progressively morphed into the main finger on the pulse of popular culture. Type any phrase, however asinine, into Google and odds are someone has blogged about it. It’s the “Dear Abby” of our generation. People want to know what’s going on the world, but they would much rather hear about if from someone on their level. Someone they can relate to. Someone they can respond to.
Perhaps this is due to the printed word being seen as elitist and unapproachable. What we read in say, the National Post or the Globe and Mail is written in stone, and what the journalist write is law. People rarely take offence to those publications, and even fewer take into account the ingrained biases and slant towards the publisher’s best interests. All letters to the editor are edited for content, and if they are seen as too inflammatory, they won’t make it in.
Bloggers have the advantage of being able to write on any subject they want, with the added bonus that readers can comment on each topic. Someone can then comment on their response and so on. It opens the world up to discussion and leaves little room for the grey areas found in conventional news media.
Blogging offers a way for disparate groups to come together for the common good of knowledge. I’ve started a blog about Tourism on Vancouver Island. I’m writing this blog entry on bobolicious, the blog forum on backofthebook.ca. Daily I read countless blogs, from the escapist and useless (Perez Hilton) to inspiring and thought provoking (Time Magazine.)
Because many of the news magazines and papers are becoming astutely aware of the shift from main stream journalism from hard copy to blogs, many are actually creating blog offshoots to their regular daily run newspapers. In an attempt to tap into the growing blog realm, they are hiring journalists, or asking those already on their staff to create “blogs” to appeal to a larger, younger audience.
This is a step that I would like to see more publications take. It will open the events of the world to more questions, scrutiny and conversation; as citizens of this society, it is our duty to ask questions, and not have them censored by the daily news editor.
Readers are looking to blogs for information from people who have actually lived through it. They did not just sit on the sidelines and report about the goings on of society. There are blogs from the victims of Hurricane Katrina, not the glossed-over political statements from USA Today, or the sensationalism of CNN. There are blogs about shopping on a budget from people forced to live on food stamps, welfare or other social assistance, not the “Fashionista on a Budget” columns in the Lifestyle pages, where affluent yuppies tell you where to find Jimmy Choo’s for under 300 bucks. Blogs are creating communities and empowering readers with knowledge.
The divide between the people in the know and the people left in the dark is becoming increasingly narrow. Intellectual and political snobbery is falling by the wayside and people with the knowledge wanted are providing it to readers, free of charge. The flood gates of debate, conversation and most importantly questioning have been opened, and the world owes it all to bloggers.
Opinion pages, editorials and letters to the editor have long been a way for people to express their views about politics, current events, civics, and other touchy topics. The world of the blog is far less formal. And thank God for that.
User-generated content has been around for as long as the internet, and has progressively morphed into the main finger on the pulse of popular culture. Type any phrase, however asinine, into Google and odds are someone has blogged about it. It’s the “Dear Abby” of our generation. People want to know what’s going on the world, but they would much rather hear about if from someone on their level. Someone they can relate to. Someone they can respond to.
Perhaps this is due to the printed word being seen as elitist and unapproachable. What we read in say, the National Post or the Globe and Mail is written in stone, and what the journalist write is law. People rarely take offence to those publications, and even fewer take into account the ingrained biases and slant towards the publisher’s best interests. All letters to the editor are edited for content, and if they are seen as too inflammatory, they won’t make it in.
Bloggers have the advantage of being able to write on any subject they want, with the added bonus that readers can comment on each topic. Someone can then comment on their response and so on. It opens the world up to discussion and leaves little room for the grey areas found in conventional news media.
Blogging offers a way for disparate groups to come together for the common good of knowledge. I’ve started a blog about Tourism on Vancouver Island. I’m writing this blog entry on bobolicious, the blog forum on backofthebook.ca. Daily I read countless blogs, from the escapist and useless (Perez Hilton) to inspiring and thought provoking (Time Magazine.)
Because many of the news magazines and papers are becoming astutely aware of the shift from main stream journalism from hard copy to blogs, many are actually creating blog offshoots to their regular daily run newspapers. In an attempt to tap into the growing blog realm, they are hiring journalists, or asking those already on their staff to create “blogs” to appeal to a larger, younger audience.
This is a step that I would like to see more publications take. It will open the events of the world to more questions, scrutiny and conversation; as citizens of this society, it is our duty to ask questions, and not have them censored by the daily news editor.
Readers are looking to blogs for information from people who have actually lived through it. They did not just sit on the sidelines and report about the goings on of society. There are blogs from the victims of Hurricane Katrina, not the glossed-over political statements from USA Today, or the sensationalism of CNN. There are blogs about shopping on a budget from people forced to live on food stamps, welfare or other social assistance, not the “Fashionista on a Budget” columns in the Lifestyle pages, where affluent yuppies tell you where to find Jimmy Choo’s for under 300 bucks. Blogs are creating communities and empowering readers with knowledge.
The divide between the people in the know and the people left in the dark is becoming increasingly narrow. Intellectual and political snobbery is falling by the wayside and people with the knowledge wanted are providing it to readers, free of charge. The flood gates of debate, conversation and most importantly questioning have been opened, and the world owes it all to bloggers.
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