“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
Now Millions do.” (A.J. Liebling cited in Bruns 2005, p.1)
In the past, when one dreamed to be a writer or a journalist, he might need to pay much effort to introduce his works to a publishing editor or the press media. Nowadays, however, one merely has internet access; he can play the role of ‘a reader’, ‘a writer’, ‘a journalist’, or even ‘an editor’ on cyber space. Deemed as the Read/Write Do It Yourself media (R/W DIY media), Blogging seems to be the ‘huge phenomenon’ which people can comment what is going on in the world (quoted from an interview with John Schwartz over blogging and news media, October 2007)
There are several reasons to select this topic for our group’s website presentation. First, since blogging is playing important roles in media society and is contributing an unbelievable influence over the traditional journalism, it is reasonable to create a website to educate people more about what ‘blogging’ is and what is going on in its world. Second, since the members of this website creators are the new generation who are living in the connecting age of ‘traditional newspaper’ and ‘online newspaper’, it is a good idea to explore and research more about the current social movement of these both sides in order to see the brighter pictures of digital and convergent online journalism at the moment.
The goals for this website are not only aim to educate people in general about ‘blogging’ as mentioned above, the other objective is also to demonstrate both positive and negative aspects toward the blogging as online journalism and share some idea of how to meet the appropriate line between the bloggers who perform themselves as the journalists and the traditional journalists who make use of the news media source from those blogs.
According to the interview with John Schwartz and with James Farmer ( sources from HAM 420 motif website), they both shared a similar aspect that the mass media do not see a sense of seriousness and sufficient effort in those blogs, in which bloggers declared as the ‘web based news media’. John commented that blogging positively provided us more choices, however, if the bloggers do not have proper background knowledge like what the real journalists being trained, the online journalism cannot be developed as further as expected.
After launching our website of blogging and news media, the feedback was returned in positive opinion. The website was commented as easy to explore and variety of blogging information available. By the way, what we would like to elaborate more in our website is the case study where some blogs brought about the political, social and economic impact to the news media movement such as some famous blogs in Thailand, which, in the past, successfully drove the mainstream of public opinion toward Thai government.
As Levinson says, now the internet consumers have a choice “to make our own decisions, rather than be spoon-fed by central authority” (cited in Bruns 2005, p.17), the freedom to express in public does not depend on the power of media any more but of the individuals themselves. Conclusively, it is hoped that our ‘blogging and news media’ website will be another site where those web visitors get to know more about blogging and the freedom to express to public in the ‘decent and proper’ way.
Bruns, A 2005, Gatewatching: collaborative online news production, Peter Lang publishing, NY
http:www.wikipedia.org
