Sandeep on his blog dissects an article published in The Hindustan Times written by some extremely biased (or clueless, a greater possibility) historian/writer named Ramachandra Guha. My analytical writing has been living in the dumps for quite some time but Sandeep’s take on Guha’s politically and culturally confused contemplations is quite engaging.
Recently Amardeep posted his reaction to a journalist’s outburst against bloggers. The journalist says at the beginning of his article:
Every English-speaking Indian man between 25 and 60 has written about the Hindi movies he has seen, the English books he has read, the foreign places he has travelled to and the curse of communalism. You mightn’t have read them all (there are a lot of them and some don’t make it to print) but their manuscripts exist and in this age of the internet, these masters of blah have migrated to the Republic of Blog. [ link ]
Amardeep rightly says that the writer hasn’t done his research properly and hasn’t read blogs that he should have really read before drawing such immature conclusions. I’m sure the writer didn’t read Sandeep’s blog.
Why do conventional writers and journalists (most of them, not all) hold blogging with contempt or downplay it as an elite fad? There was recently another article saying that bloggers were nothing but scavengers surviving on the toils of real journalists. Actually, they don’t understand blogging, and those who do, hate it or fear it.
A blog is a communication tool, a social media tool where people can express themselves and interact with hundreds and even thousands of their readers on a regular basis. It renders voice to people who had no voice until its advent. Anybody can today have a blog and share his or her opinions, philosophies, joys and concerns. Blogging empowers you to react immediately. Have some opinion on a newspaper article or a TV program or a movie, or a book or politician? Log into your blog account and share it with your readers. Just discovered a new recipe? Write it on your blog. Got a great video clip? Share it on your blog. Anything that can be digitally published, can be published on a blog.
Blogging initiates a two-way communication, and this is something feared by journalists, MSM people, politicians, and all those who thrive on the inability to react. In pre-blogging times the most you could do was send a letter to the editor if you read something nefarious like Guha’s article. It was up to the editor to publish your letter or whether to “edit” it or not. The Hindustan Times would certainly never publish Sandeep’s letter in its present form. And even if it were published, it would only be available to the HT readers. His blog post can be read by thousands of people from all walks of live. For instance, I read it just now and I have never in my life read HT.
Blogs also jump in when the mainstream media (MSM) fails to cover relevant news. Recently Mridula highlighted an incident where a laborer’s child died due to the callousness of IIT Kanpur authorities, and I too wrote about the incident. Taking a cue from different blogs the MSM too has started highlighting the shameful incident. Similarly when Manjunath was murdered the TV channels and newspapers woke up only after the incident had been widely discussed on various blogs. Bloggers have forced many multinational companies like Dell, Sony, etc. to mend their ways. Journalists, with their limited reach, would have never been able to achieve such feats.
Instead of criticizing blogging, journalists and writers should embrace blogging to reach a wider readership.
Here you can read diverse views on blogging.
Technorati Tags: journalists, msm, blogging
{ 1 comment }
Amrit you can add one more incident to the list, banning of blogspot by Indian Government. And they have to eat the humble pie within few days. Incidentally that too was discovered by Mridula
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