State of the Blogging World 2012

This is statistics of United States but this happen all over the world!

The main facts about blogging:

• 60 % men and 40 % women are writing blogs 
• The main blogging platforms - Wordpress 43 % and Blogger 35 %
• 31 million bloggers in USA
• Only 8 % of bloggers earn enough money to support their family
• 9 % sustain their lifestyle, blogging 4-6 hours a day
• 2 % make $150 K blogging from exotic locations, spend 1-2 hours a day
• 81 % never make $100 from blogging 
• 42 million blogs
• 329 million people view a blog
• 500 000 new posts a day
• 400 000 daily comments
• 60 % of businesses have their blog
• 35 % are active in their blog (at least one time a month)
• 65 % haven't updated for one year or more
• ENGLISH is the main language (66 %)

State of the Blogging World

Op-ed style article: first example of op-ed (part 1)

Expressing opinion

Op-ed style article - is a newspaper or magazine article that expresses the opinion. It can be op-ed editorial (which are usually unsigned and written by editorial board member) or an article written by writer who usually do not belong to the newspaper's editorial board.

Citizen journalism has disadvantages as well: BUT...

In order to analyze today’s media situation and citizen journalism in Lithuania, the editor of ikrauk.15min.lt news website, Renata Linkutė was interviewed. “Readers often send photos, notifications of events or sometimes just wrote one sentence in this portal. Then professional journalists can make of it a complete, high-quality article. A citizen often can be speedier, notice more interesting things, while a traditional journalist is sitting in Parliament or Government meeting,” said R. Linkutė.On the other hand, R. Linkutė said that the citizen-journalist cannot always gather all necessary information because he or she simply does not have professional journalist skills and knowledge or being in the place of incident did not dare to speak to witnesses.It is true that all electronic information needs to be treated with caution. “One misjudgement or error has the potential to escalate overnight into a cause ‘celebre’. All local journalism is now global, instantly available internationally,” is written in an article Diplomacy and Journalism.

Awesome advantages of a journalism of citizens

The professor Eric Freedman, Michigan State University, in his lecture said that bringing events to light is very important role of the press. It is undoubtedly true and it is exactly what citizen journalism is trying to do. In fact, the traditional newspaper readers can not know whether the article is ordered, how much a journalist is going to be paid for it and how much truth is in this article. Citizen journalism comes from people who truly want to notify something to people and do not require compensation for it. They are not required to listen to an owner of the newspaper and write in the way he or she wants. So, it is evident that some readers will increasingly rely on non-profit professional journalists. According to R. Sakadolskis, nowadays there is less and less reliance to traditional media and journalists. And in the article Diplomacy and Journalism (author: Bridget Kendall) is written that citizen journalism “have no interest in spilling the beans”.

Citizen journalism – unprofessional but innovative way of spreading news

More and more we get to know about the events not from professional journalists, print media but from blogs and citizen journalism portals (for example in Lithuania: ikrauk.15min.lt, vikipedija.lt; international: dailyHeights.com, Bluffton Today, international.ohmynews.com), which are rapidly expanding its activities. A new media era began, but yet it’s not clear, how it will end.

In a virtual environment anybody, despite their education, belief or age, can write, publish and spread the news. This is a citizen journalism, which offers opportunities for creativity, but also opportunities for untested, subjective information as well. So, what future can today's media journalists create? Maybe amateur journalists defame Lithuanian and other countries journalists? Or, conversely, encourage traditional journalists to improve their skills?