Wasted Time?

You know, I spent the majority of two days this week drafting long, deep articles on blogging, illegal immigration, and just things, in general. And didn't publish any of them.

I actually spent almost all day either Friday or Thursday working on a scathing reflection on the Blogosphere and the total joke it's become (thanks, as always, to the media and the morons that comprise the majority of the world's populace - greedy opportunists, all), but decided at the last minute not to publish it because of the launch of a new site that claims it's going to turn the whole thing around. I figure, why not give them a chance? After all, nothing I talked about is going to change in a week or so, and if they actually make some strides in the right direction, I don't want my scathing retort thrown in my face on down the road.

Something similar kept me from publishing the draft I wrote yesterday on the illegal immigration problem - and it most certainly is a problem. But I can nutshell that one: illegal immigration is one of the major contributing factors to the current economic situation. Simple-pimple. Granted, it's far from the only one - far from the most prominent, in fact - but it is part of the issue, and the major point I was making is that anyone who tries to tell you that's not true or makes you out to be some kind of "right-wing, gun-toting, Bible-beating conspiracy theorist" for suggesting that is a total moron. Still, I wound-up getting so far off-track throughout the whole thing that I would have had to spend at least as long editing it as I did drafting it for it to make the point.

And in the meantime, some news items that I wanted to get to have come and gone. I didn't miss them, my attentions were just focused elsewhere and I didn't get to them when they first happened. But that's what blogging is about and even though I made this point over to Weird Ink, I wanted to make it here as well.

I am a journalist, but I am not a reporter; blogs are online journals, but they are not proper news sources, nor are they supposed to be.

So, if you sometimes wonder why I often talk about news stories days on down the road, it's usually because I wasn't particularly interested in the item, but I knew it fit here and I needed to mention it - either that, or I simply didn't have time to get to it right then. Blogs are not supposed to "break" news, regardless of what the media has led you to believe, and none of the sites which engage in this sort of reporting are actual blogs - again, regardless of what the media tells you or they claim. A lot of them started out as blogs, but once they crossed the line into mainstream journalism - reporting - they quickly became full-fledged news magazines. And most of them headed in this direction after they first reported a rumor that was later verified by a second source - an actual news agency - which credited them for "breaking" the news.

The Rundown, and all of the other Weirding Blogs, blog about news items, but are neither news agencies nor magazines - nor am I looking to turn any of them into such. The only "breaking news" you're likely to find on any of them are in the form of advance reviews and "sneak peeks" at upcoming products, sites, comic books, etc.

I just wanted to clear that up, because I keep seeing people on TV and hearing about them in the media as being "bloggers," yet they actually run full-fledged news sites. Several of them started out as bloggers and many of their sites use Content Management Systems similar to those employed by bloggers, but that does not make them bloggers and it does not make their sites blogs.

And while you will find several full-fledged articles here, the vast majority of the content is actual blog posts - what I did today, what I plan to do tomorrow, what I think about this or that, what I'm eating, ad nauseam. That's what a blog is, guys!

And I'm not talking down to you; I'm trying to impress this point upon you because so many people have so thoroughly bastardized the concept that I am getting more and more comments, questions, and criticisms referring to the content as "articles" and "reports," etc., that I wanted to disabuse you of that notion. Yes, some of the posts are actually written to be articles - inverted-pyramid structure, information presentation and follow-through, citation of sources, etc. - but they are the minority. In fact, you can see an obvious difference in what is presented on the site, proper, and what is presented in the blogs: feature articles on The Weirding follow the proper structure and form for essays and articles, while the blog posts are freeform and offer more insight and commentary than actual information.

So, you know, just so you know...

© C Harris Lynn, 2008