Blogging: The Wave of Change

By Matthew Gemme

In the land of broken banks and closing newspapers there is a savior for aspiring news writers - the Internet.

“It’s the wave of change,” David Hinkle, a blogger for www.joystiq.com, said about writing on the internet.

Hinkle, a 26 year old blogger from York, Penn, has been employed as a full time blogger for the past three years. Before then he bounced around for work, waiting to be discovered.
Hinkle is a part of only 8 percent of bloggers who are paid to blog, according to The Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Hinkle primarily writes about video games, which has been something he’s always aspired to do.

“It’s always been my dream to work with games in some capacity and I’m thrilled that I get to each and every day as my job,” he says on his own personal site, “Dave’s Place (www.david-hinkle.com).”

In March 2006, Hinkle was hired to help start a pair of new blog properties for http://www.joystiq.com/. After a few months he was asked to be the site lead on those sites, a role which he held until the site re-launched in January. His role now is to be a contributing editor for http://www.joystiq.com/.

For bloggers you need many of the same skills as a journalist does, Hinkle says.

“It's a job where you need to have an analytical mind, you need to be objective… it's about tackling stories and following through on things,” said Hinkle about his job for http://www.joystiq.com/.

The difference between journalism and blogging comes from the actual workplace.

“You need able to work on your own. We don’t go into an office every day; we run a virtual one,” Hinkle said.

Despite the fact that bloggers run out of their own homes, it is not quite the ascetic lifestyle critics may see it as.

“Collaboration happens every day in everything we do,” Hinkle said.

Hinkle said that he often talks on the phone to, runs online chats with, and sees co-workers at big trade shows every year. Hinkle also said he has an editor, whom with he is constantly bouncing ideas off of.

“I don’t just write something, click a button, and it goes onto the site,” Hinkle said.
With blogging representing an unfamiliar work style and newspaper opportunities getting smaller and smaller, prospective journalists have a big decision to make.

“A big turn off is the lack of job security in the industry right now,” senior journalism student at Stonehill College Chris Almeida said.
Janina Todesca, a sophomore at Stonehill College, is also looking towards having a future in writing.

“I would love to do anything where I can write for a living and have people read what I have to say and blogging seems to be the newest form of that,” Todesca said.
Blogging, however, it is not only an advancement on standard journalism. It is a new form of entertainment that surpasses the abilities of standard newspapers.

According to The Pew Internet & American Life Project, blog readers in America make up 39 percent of the online population and blog writing population has grown to 12 million American adults.

With so many different writers, blog readers can find topics that most standard papers do not have time to cover.

“I read blogs to keep up to date on the latest news each blog specializes in,” says Caroline Malcolm, a sophomore at Northeastern who reads a blog on North African politics, another about sustainable living, and one about human rights.

Malcolm said that blogs have a bias, but it’s the bias that attracts her to them because she can read two different blogs to get different perspectives with which she can agree and disagree.

“Plus bloggers are usually more entertaining and comedic than newspaper journalists,” Malcolm said.

People, nationwide, blog non-professionally from things such as their opinions on politics to their March Madness picks.

One of the biggest reasons people blog is to share personal experiences with others.
According to The Pew Internet & American Life Project, 76 percent of bloggers say a reason they blog is to document their personal experiences and share them with others.

Kathleen Atkins, a junior at Stonehill College was reading a blog when recently as she talked about the issue.

“I like to read my friends personal blog to see her take on different things. It’s a form of amusement,” Atkins said.

Whether it’s writing to share experiences, blogs provide information and amusement to their readers that standard newspapers cannot always do. The blogging population, mostly un-paid, provides a rivaling service to newspapers. Unpaid bloggers do not have editors, and can freely voice their opinions while paid bloggers are able to get their information to a much greater audiences.

Between the lack of jobs and the lack of money going into the newspaper industry, and its casual appeal to both writers and readers internet blogging may just be “the wave of change.”