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Is Blogging Journalism?

November 30, 2009 by Taran Rampersad

Someone on Facebook who asked to remain anonymous asked me the following question:

Blogging seems like fun. I ought to start one day... when I have time. Our government is actually proving to be a strong motivator for me to start. I just have to learn where journalism draws the line (I mean, ranting online that the PM is a @#$%hole is probably not journalism). Or do I have a misconception, that blogging/social commentary is not journalism?

That's a good question. And there's no easy answer.

My view - and there are many views, most apparently more popular than my own - is that the word blogging simply indicates the technology used, just as newsprint paper is typically used for newspapers. Not everything printed on newsprint paper is a newspaper; not everything that uses blog software technology is something I would consider to be writing or journalism.

Frankly, blogging can be whatever a particular blogger wants it to be. If you want to rant online and call political figures names, that would fall under blogging - but it almost certainly wouldn't fall under journalism.

So to answer the question, I need to frame what journalism is, at least for myself. To me, journalism is the reporting of facts and connecting facts in ways that inform people. In this way, blogging can be journalism. Journalism also contains Op-Ed pieces (social commentary is an example), and in this way blogging can also be journalism. But blogging, in and of itself, is not journalism. Blogging is simply a reference to how the information is published. {Read more}

Introducing KnowTnT.com

October 18, 2009 by Taran Rampersad

Welcome to KnowTnT.com, a bit of an experiment of mine whose successes and failures depend on the community. To celebrate, I'm having another cup of coffee.

Well, What Is It?

That's a good question, and the answer is that it is planned to be an ever evolving unauthorized biography of Trinidad and Tobago. There are many possibilities for it, and there are plenty of things that will be implemented over time that I hope will be of worth.

Over the years, close friends and distant enemies have criticized my criticisms by asking whether I had done anything about it or whether I could do it better. It was a valid criticism, and as you can tell it's been constructive. How constructive has yet to be determined. Will it succeed? Will it fail? There's no telling, but the effort and commitment are and will continue to be apparent.

On Saturday morning, I woke up, registered the domain name, set up the hosting and got started.

The general ideas, which have been brewing over the last 9 years, are rather simple: {Read more}

  • To allow more people and businesses within Trinidad and Tobago to have a presence and voice.
  • To remove some of the ignorance within Trinidad and Tobago regarding social media and to diminish the ability of others to profit from that ignorance while maintaining or increasing the ignorance.
  • To find a home for my posts on Trinidad and Tobago which always seem a bit out of place to me on the front page of KnowProSE.com given that sites evolving nature over the last 9 years. KnowProSE.com posts on Trinidad and Tobago are here.
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