Journalism vs Blogging - time to put Gramps in a museum!

Written on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 11:22 am | by benign0

Again I differ to Marck’s take on this whole blogging-vs-journalism in only one aspect.

Marck says:

bloggers pose a legitimate threat not only to circulation, but to the very existence of the newspaper and print media

I don’t think so. Like the now-defunct myth of the paperless office that the advent of the personal computer was supposed to herald, the tree-chomping infrastructure of Old Media will still be in use for a few years to come. It is really cutting edge technologies like digital paper that threaten Old Media. Until those technologies mature, reading a newspaper or a magazine is still more comfortable than hunching over a laptop to take stock of the latest fiesta issues. Until then, Old Media is safe, and edited content will continue to rule.

What to me is the real interesting thing about this debate is how old belief systems continue to imprison the collective intellect.

Many fail to see the irony in the way that Old Farts talk about “setting standards” and “setting examples”. That, coming from a bunch of people under whose watch the Philippines descended from being a regional poster-child to the basket case that it is today. Great “role models” indeed, Gramps.

“Journalist” is just a label. Like most labels the term got hijacked by the self-righteous and before you know it, you have “standards” to define who is entitled to said label.

Just as we don’t want to see a bunch of Old Farts presuming to tell people what a “journalist” is, we should not feel compelled to be too fixated on what a “blogger” is. At the end of the day, all of us are just users of and participants in the available forms of media. All the governance built around the would-be institution called “journalism” (heck, we even have a university course called “journalism”) don’t stop “journalists” from behaving like rats scrounging around for “scoops” making them no different from the armies of fishball vendors that parachute in whenever a crowd gathers around the latest street fiesta.

And to this day, Pinoy journalists covering disasters and accidents are not above shoving their mikes into doctors’ faces as they struggle to tend to the injured.

Real classy indeed, gramps.

Unregulated content producers (such as “bloggers”) don’t pretend to be anything other than what they do. Compare that to their regulated counterparts (such as those who call themselves “journalists”) who have come to see themselves as some heroic guardian of freedom that comes to the rescue of Pinoys whenever this “freedom” is threatened by the armies of darkness. I thank Ellen Tordesillas for crystallising that last piece of insight for me, by the way.

Take the blogger BryanBoy. He is a Filipino web-developer-turned-fashion-commentator who honoured (and was himself honoured by) the recently-held Sydney Fashion week with his presence and was invited to the front row of just about every catwalk show he graced (pardon my lack of familiarity with fashion terminology). The term elite blogger was used to describe him and two others (one based in New York) by the Australian media many times. By no means held to any standard of ethics or decorum, Bryan Boy earned his stripes by being himself, being true to himself, and not holding anything sacred. It is the community that gives him validation, sustained by the consistency and genuineness of the way he engages in his craft.

Needless to say, Gramps wouldn’t approve of his style. But who needs approval nowadays anyway? The technology is available to bypass all that.

MLQ3 himself relates his own take on what the wonders of today’s technology afford us whether employed in his role as a “journalist” or a “blogger”:

[…]I’m basically self-taught and am brazen enough to write on subjects (and be in a profession) for which I lack the academic credentials […]

Interestingly enough, I believe the perverted credentialism of Pinoy society is what mutes what can potentially be a broader and more balanced national debate. A culture of deferrence to seniority and credentials — the “are you qualified (or old enough) to say that??” righteousocracy — excludes 80% of Pinoy humanity.

I therefore see this whole blogging-vs-journalism debate as a mere microcosm of the overall inability of Pinoy society to shake off the legacy of the old no-results thinking of our tribal elders.

Indeed, it takes lots of academic credentials to navigate the convoluted governance frameworks created by the Old Farts. Yet we fancy ourselves as a society that values the say of the common tao.

It makes sense for a nation whose median age is 22 years old and where 34% of its population is under fourteen, to start thinking seriously about putting old Gramps in a museum and actually STEP UP to take more control over its destiny.

The Old Farts fucked up the 1950’s, the 1960’s, and 1970’s. We shouldn’t allow them to continue fucking up the coming decades — considering they will not be around to see the consquences of any further fuck ups they deliver.

Chill out Gramps. Those over-engineered structures of information dissemintation you built from your mahogany desks are giving way to the technology-enabled more Darwinian self-correcting mechanism of the Web.

Happy retirement!

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About The Author: benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.COM and has once been described as "one of the most enthusiastic hecklers of the politically-passionate" by a respected journalist.

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2 Responses to “Journalism vs Blogging - time to put Gramps in a museum!”

  1. Pochero on May 7th, 2008 1:02 pm

    Interesting piece from someone who “has once been described as ‘one of the most enthusiastic hecklers of the politically-passionate’ by a respected journalist.” Or was it from “a respected Old Fart”?

  2. cocoy on May 18th, 2008 5:58 am

    I think there is something more profound than simply the whole notion of blogging v. journalism. I think it goes right at the heart of what Generation V is, at the heart of what virtual communities are..

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