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: second example of op-ed (part 2)

Op-ed style article

Another chosen op-ed style article is named Thanks for Not Sharing by R. Cohen (The New York Times, December 6, 2012). In this article the author sarcastically analyses the absorption of the unwanted shared personal information and images that is spread over the social media. First of all, in this article we also can find strong and persuasive arguments, original ideas and strong opinion that should be in a good editorial. But this op-ed article is good for his title as well, which is a little bit shocking and attention grabbing. It is said that readers have short attention spans and it is necessary (when writing editorial) to attract readers with a strong headline that emphasizes your central message. Also, a title should be catchy for readers to grasp the idea quickly. In this op-ed article (as well as in the first example) the title is the first introduction to the argument and it makes editorial to be really good written.

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.

Shattered Glass: who wins fact or fiction? (Part 4)

Say truth or lie

Similarly to H. de Burgh, American professor of journalism D. Gillmor writes that there are four pillars of good journalism: thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency. These notions have a goal – objectivity. When a journalist obeys the rules of objective writing, only then he can be called as a professional journalist. “The best reporters I know always want to make one more call, check with one more source“, said D. Gillmor.

Maybe not war, not culture but the Internet cements European identity?

We all live in some kind of a social and cultural circle because we are born into a certain family, nation, environment. We are different and unique but nowadays we have a strong connection with not only our own small communities but with whole world. As E. Shafak said, if we stay for too long inside our cultural cocoons, our imagination might shrink, our hearts might dwindle and our humanness may wither. Communities of the likeminded are one of the greatest dangers of today’s globalized world.

So, the question is, how relevant is the overall idea of society’s culture in the globalized, de-territorialized world? Are we moving towards something universal, towards convergent communication culture? How relevant is the idea of ‘European journalism’? And what, actually, cements European identity?

ORAL HISTORY: what are differences and similarities with journalism?

Oral history

There can be a lot of different definitions of oral history and it is very imprecise term. L. Abrams in his book “Oral History Theory” explains that oral historian asks people questions to discover four things: what happened, how they felt about it, how they recall it, and what wider public memory they draw upon. He emphasizes that memory and the process of remembering are central to oral history. Donald A. Ritchie (“Doing Oral History”) also has a similar attitude to it because he considers memory as a core of oral history, from which meaning can be extracted and preserved. “Oral history collects memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews”, writes Donald A. Ritchie.

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?

The culture of communication and media is changing. We CANNOT stand behind!

As we live in such times of rapid communication, it changes the relationship between media, audience and journalism. Now the audience has a lot of opportunities to be involved in journalistic activities.

According to the article The fragmenting mass media marketplace (authors: John Dimmick, Ohio State, Angela Powers and others):

 " The rise of Internet news and the inception of mobile devices represents additional gratification opportunities, opportunities to consume news anytime"

This means that opportunities to write news anytime and anywhere arise as well. The Internet has opened up a plenthora of new opportunities for people to express their views and interact with each other.