Mr (or Mrs) Write
* This article appeared in the Citizen Newspaper on 9 June 2006 [Link].
I never finished my degree. Or should I say degrees (plural). You see, I have completed one third of a communications course and two thirds of a psychology course. For all intense and purposes I have a whole degree.
Seriously though. when I realised I was pretty hopeless as an academic but quite fruitful as an entrepreneur, I ditched any hope I had left of fulfilling a somewhat disturbing childhood fantasy of being a journalist. As a kid, there was something about having a hand in the publishing process – of contributing to the media – that really attracted me. I even applied at one point for a sports reporter position at our local city paper, but was issued a red card before I even got on the field. Too young, they said.
You’ll understand then the appeal blogging had when I first discovered the online citizen publishing juggernaut. Up until very recently, the Internet had failed in its initial promise of democratizing publishing for everyone. One could learn HTML or FrontPage or Flash, but the learning curve was too great. If you wanted to publish on the Net, you had to spend money to learn or pay someone to do it for you. Blogging turned that on its head. Blogging suddenly offered me, ordinary Joe Public, to be heard online, and therefore on a global stage. Heck, this was better than the local paper!
And so I blogged. I set up an account at Google’s www.blogger.com for free. I published. I shared. I thought out loud. And eventually, I got read. I linked to other blogs. They linked to me. I networked. I grew. I wrote more. People noticed. Social software, this evolving Internet, and my network leapfrogged me over the traditional gatekeepers of traditional media, into this column.
It’s time you started speaking. I’m sure you, like me, have something meaningful to say. Not perfect, but meaningful. Find ways to engage and contribute to the online conversation.
Join the blogosphere. Go to www.wordpress.com, and start your own free blog in 5 minutes. Go to www.blogger.com – another free service. Experiment. Play. Contribute. Discover your inner journalist.
