Is this thing on?

“Blogging isn’t journalism, it’s graffiti with punctuation.”


If you saw Contagion (which I did) you may have picked up on this little gem.  Honestly, it's the only real memorable thing I took away from the movie, other than a slightly nauseated stomach and the beginnings of a healthy complex.  Germs and gems aside, though, I thought long and hard about that quote.  Sure, at the end of the day, it was just a writer's quip, but there's something to that.  It's also a slight reflection of a societal attitude, an evolving stereotype.   A perpetuation of the 'idiot citizen'.  We're all dumb: we talk that way, we vote that way, we write that way.  I'm no whiz at statistics, but it would seem to me that if everyone is dumb...then no one is. 
 
Why do I need a degree in journalism to share my thoughts with the world?  Why do I have to have a byline that includes a history of higher education and involvement with a major corporation?  Why can't I be relevant of my own accord?  And that is, in case you didn't know it, what we all want.  To be relevant, to have meaning, to find meaning.  I'll acknowledge I'm new to this.  I started my blog, and maintain it, with no expectations...and really, no clear purpose.  I prefer to keep it open and without boundaries...because the minute I impose those restrictions, I am thus limiting my creative integrity.  I box myself into a streamlined train of thought, and if you should know anything about me at all, it's that my  trains of thought visit multiple stations.  Simultaneously.  And I'm motivated to write about it.  It's where my passion lies, it's what I'm called to do.  Some people hear music and want to play....some people taste food and want to cook.  Some people feel pain and want to heal.  I see the world, and I want to write.  To the world, of the world.  More often than not, my sphere of reference is small, and includes my immediate surroundings.  But that doesn't mean I'm ignorant to the world at large, or that my voice is too drowned out to matter.  I've known more than one person who refused to vote because 'my vote hardly counts any way.'  That's the beauty of a free society...it does count!  That's exactly what votes are in this country; counted.  And why shouldn't voices be counted, too?
 
Blogging embraces journalism with more honesty and sincerity than does a modern journalist.  The bias of the blogger isn't hidden or masked; this is ME.  It's who I am, it's what I think.  Unlike journalists, the majority of bloggers have yet to be tainted by the mass media, or corporate agendas.  They're out there, writing, blogging, chronicling the world from the front lines, not from the sidelines.  To compare it to spray painted caricatures, or to question its relevancy isn't only arrogant, it's insulting.  The Internet belongs to no one, therefore it belongs to everyone. 
 
So beware of the blogger....quiet though they creep.   Because the most contagious thing of all?  Is passion.