Blogging & Grassroot Media

Ah! How I love to blog about blogging. The BBC site has a nice mini-overview of some tools that are popularly used in personal citizen journalism (a term I first heard in the blogging mentoring project I'm currently volunteering on). "Personal citizenship journalism" is all about an individual's ability to tell their own stories from their unique perspective.

Blogging, wikis and podcasting have become popular ways to create an online presence and share ideas with a cyber audience. While I have certainly been blogging and using Wikis for a while now, podcasting is an area that I am yet to venture in. Having just acquired an MP3 player, I am excited about subscribing to various podcasts. I won't be rushing to start my own online show just yet. It seems to me that if there is a technology which allows people to voice their opinions before a large audience, many people will tend to use it - whether they have something interesting to say or not. The line between what's relevant information and what is not appears to be ever-shrinking. Well, I suppose in this new era of citizen journalism, the all-important question is "What is the criteria for 'important' information and who gets to decide what is important to share?"

Some months ago, I posted some guidelines I found online for blogging. Today, I found this old article about bloggers who write about their work and even though I don't really blog about my work, I find many of the tips quite useful.