Two weeks of posts...

Can bloggers be journalists? Federal court says yes

And what do I have to show for it? A blog that nobody has seen but me. I mean, I could just send this to my friends but I'm not really adding anything that hasn't already been said by professional journalists, or even more experienced bloggers on their own sites. I'm not really planning on saying much about the article I posted but I thought it was a good segue into a little rant about blogging in general. Oh I think you also might've noticed that I'm not in fact posting every day. And if you actually read every post, put the word "banana" into my scoring description on the LMS somehow.

The blog is a great tool for aspiring journalists, amateur anythings, or angst ridden teens who just need to vent somewhere instead of cutting their wrists. It's even better if you can find some niche and attract readers who are genuinely interested in what you're writing about. The problem is, as I've learned in economics, once a market fills up, there's not really much left to do in that sector. For instance, I've been writing about technology. I could name 10 other sites that do it much better than me, and I see 7 of them in my quicklinks bar in Firefox as I type this. I don't mean to squash the dream for anybody, or talk badly about this assignment, but this is no more than just a taste of what the Internet could really offer somebody that's committed and finds a good place.

Even if I opened up this blog, sent it to people, committed myself to updating it every day...where will that get me? I'd probably be shut down for plagiarism, and I don't really have any sources, by the time I get a story its been everywhere and every side of the story has been written about. Not-so-long story short, the blog is great if you have a crack team of well-trained writers working around the clock to make sure they get good stories first. For a student like me who's just doing this for the grade, I don't really see the appeal in doing this 3 weeks from now. Maybe I'll change my mind, we'll see.