BLOG AND JOURNALISM“What is in your mind” that’s the face book asks us when we sign in to a face book account. Twitter further asks us “what are you doing”. These two are the frequent online questions that have been answered every second by a large chunk of people today. It makes people always connecting. The blogs are more the space where we exercise our daily diary scribbling. But past 5 years blogs have been more influential and has played severe role in carrying messages. For an example, when a boy from Palestine writes about his country and people, and the chaotic situation there, it’s nothing but simple and pure journalism. Journalism can simply defined as sending information from one place to other or from one source to the destination. Here these blogs do the same as what our ordinary media does. Hence blogs are the new media where every individual can be a journalist.
WHAT IS BLOG
A blog is a contraction of the term weblog usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, description of events, or other material such as graphics or videos. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Hence it’s a platform where an individually can express himself. Here the writer also writes whatever his or her reader intends, hence they grow in to that level where the readers come in to the blog with comments and criticism.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM AND BLOG
The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the modern tool of modern technology and the global distribution of the internet to create augment or fact-check media on their own or collaboration with others. For example we might write about a city council meeting on your blog or in an online forum, or you could fact-check a news paper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog, or you might snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and posyt its online, or you might video type a similar event and post it on you tube. Foreign countries are now experience the trend of diminishing the number of print material generally newspapers. The emergence of e reading graduated their reading culture, but in India still e reading has not yet accepted fully. But social networking sites like face book, twitter are the spaces where the Indians engage to report the things surrounded them. For an example when Mumbai terror attacks hit the media coverage and was severely reporting the updates, but a group of tweets which carried the best and the latest out of the attacks were read all over India. It was the initial period of twitter, and then the whole country had a massive twitter mania which came to the public limelight when Sashi Tharoor tweeted about the ‘cattle class’ journey.
MEDIA GATEKEEPING AND BLOG
Every media has its own politics and values. In India the disease is more severe. And hence news and the style of presenting the news often vary in different media. This can cause the serious problem of ethics in journalism. While in blogs which is a open space to write anything a blogger like. Here there is no the process of gate keeping. Blogs have well used for protesting, self a, self expression etc. no outer force controls the words and sentences of the blogger. More than everything it has far more reaches than ordinary media now in the society.
Hence blog and other converging spaces have provided for better scope for citizen journalism. Now the field of journalism has reduced itself to locales. Here everybody can blog whtever happens internationally or subjects of major interest. But local issues or topics which we generally leave unnoticed can have better news value. It’s now the world of community journalist who has a rapport with their specific topic or a specific place will write or report the happenings and trends of the area they are concerned. This is the new emerging field called community journalism.
COMMUNITY JOURNALISM
Community journalism is locally oriented, professional news coverage that typically focuses on city neighborhood, individual suburbs or small towns rather than metropolitan, state or nation wide. If it covers wider topics, community concentrates on their effort on local readers. Community newspapers often but not always published weekly also tends to cover subjects larger news media do not. In the United States about 98 percent of newspapers are classified as community newspapers with circulation below 50,000. An increased number of community newspaper are now owned by large media organization
Community journalists are typically trained professional reporters and editors. Some specialized training programmes have recently emerged at established undergraduate and graduate journalism programs. Community journalism shouldnot be confused citizen journalists, who are often unpaid amateurs ,or with civic journalism, although many community newspapaers practice it.
OVERSEAS BLOGS
There are a lot of people who live in foreign countries for earning their livelihood. They too use this media to express their feelings and identity. Some blogs were of their old village, the shabby road, journeys, even good stories comes out from such blogs. Gulf countries where no other way to express themselves, they use to blog their overseas experience. Some use it as a tool to report things done there to their loved ones here.
Bloggers are now the real source of news. The blogs from the war fields such as from Iraq, Palestine are such wonderful blogs, where bloggers update all the latest. We sitting in India can log on to such blogs and can be helpful to understand the supreme life and sufferings of the people living there. For example riverbend.blogspot.com, ingaza.wordpress.com, etc are the exclusive blogs from the Middle East. There a lot others which tell us the inner stories of remote villages in farthest places. Thus blogs serve the greatest purpose of carrying the news, the real duty of a journalist.
