Hot off the blogging press

Blogger: “Let me into the Warhammer beta. I have rights man, I’m press. I demand special vip access!”

Warhammer Beta: “Tough, not everyone can get in. You need a press badge.”

Blogger: “But I should have a shiny press badge, look I have a blog that gets 10 hits a week!”

Darren, the strapping common sense gamer raises the following question to generate further discussion on an upcoming suwt cast: Are bloggers press?

Putting on my captain obvious pantaloons for this blip: 9 ¾ bloggers (some limbs are lost, but they grow back) in the traditional sense aren’t press. I don’t claim to be a journalist; I like to think of myself as another amateur scribbler in the primordial online space I associate in. I don’t want to provide the news either - other sites already do and I try not to regurgitate what has already been said in my space by fellow bloggers (something I believe that is practiced far too often) unless it’s something I feel strongly about or I choose to take a humorous approach.

I believe all the topics discussed in blogging spaces are small bits that gather and belong to larger social media circuits. These perpetual circuits evolve and continually expand and even intertwine. Any thought that is shared and tracked by others is in a circuit. Yes, even those bits which boil down to the minutia that make up our daily lives. We are the protagonist or antagonist, and some of us enjoy too record even these mundane parts and share them for anyone to read, typically by close friends and relatives, or stalkers.

Portals or hubs are a hybrid press, typically run by a hive, a collective. These gateways are more like press aggregators than anything, but if a larger audience congregates at these gateways, it is practical they receive the attention (exclusive, accessibility) that traditional press would. In some cases, traditional press may not exist for a niche, and an online outlet is the best target to distribute information. For these collectives to acquire press benefits they have to be recognized as being press although they should be deemed something entirely different than press, but perhaps that is a debate in semantics since they both provide the purpose to inform. What is certain the audience has to be there. What I like about alternative media is someone can rise from a nobody to a somebody; they will have a bigger impact on their audience than traditional media, bloggers have the power to influence and unite others. It is only natural that people tend to gravitate to a voice.

Maybe, I’m batshit crazy but that’s how I perceive the difference. It is up to the reader to believe if content from a blogger is irresponsible or meaningful. Having that choice is a good thing. Most bloggers are critiques, they aren’t press per say even if they inject their own bias or tend to even follow journalistic qualities. It’s just a lot easier for us to share these opinions in another shared space, that happens to be infinite. It doesn’t make us professionals or credible with those that prefer neutrality, it doesn’t make us all press either, bloggers are part of something far greater.

I really dislike the term blogger, I don’t give a shit about those who use it as if it were an insult, it just sounds stupid. I blame google.