The end of the written world... And my murder confession.

I wasn't going to get angry this early in the week. After all it is Monday and the recovery from the weekend is still interfering with most people's thought processes, including mine. However, like most of my Monday resolutions, this one has already failed.


As I sat down to my newspaper with a freshly squeezed apple, ginger and mint juice and freshly ground coffee - don't for a moment think this makes me organised, or one of those braggy fabulous bloggers who have their lives in a much more controlled state of order - it was instead done out of necessity and at the expense of other essential things like having a shower or getting out of my pyjamas, but I digress - I found myself reading about bloggers and blogging in The Age. 


I'll get on to that in a second. First, I have to confess. To murder. Apparently as the author of a blog or two, I am partially responsible for the death of good journalistic writing. I do like to have apostrophes in their correct locations (refer below to the superman of the grammatical world - thanks Judy Horacek) and the misuse of their / they're and suchlike makes me visibly cringe, however I will admit to my commas being in the wrong places, sentences that are too long, too short or lacking in sense or substance entirely. And that makes me a killer. Apparently.

The opinion piece by Michael Kinsley, a senior and experienced journalist, editor and writer refers itself to an opinion blog by Felix Salmon lamenting the lack of well written work on the internet compared to volume.


Agreed, there are a lot of blogs out there that do make you want to weep, not due to the content, but more the inane ramblings of the barely literate, but I doubt that many of them are purporting to be high end journalists. Can we criticise people for putting something on the internet when it is more and more difficult to be a published author by other means?


Not all journalism is accurate, moral or unbiased (News of the World and Andrew Bolt - I'm talking to you!). Note triple use of punctuation !). If this was Scrabble - the punctuation version, I'm sure it would get bonus points (or possibly a lifetime ban). 


It has been a long time since the population has referred only to one source of media for their news content. It is patronising to assume that we no longer want facts or accuracy. In fact most of us are quite good at assessing information due to a general (and probably warranted) mistrust of what is fed to us.


A few bad blogs won't change that. There are some fantastic blogs out there providing independent and fascinating content in a well written manner. They may be more conversational than an article in the Australian or the Financial Review, but they make issues accessible and give some of us without journalistic training the opportunity to have a say.


Who's to say that our opinions on a section of life from us with our expertise in our own fields are less relevant or well written than one from someone with yes - more training in that area, but dare I say it possibly less experience?




- Conflict of interest declaration - I may in fact be married to a journalist. Fairfax pays our bills. Please don't make journalists obsolete either - mortgages are expensive!