Following in their footsteps

Well, like many other modern day journalists before me and with much reluctance, I've decided to finally embrace Web 2.0 and create a blog.

This isn't the first time I've ever blogged before, though. Although I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, in middle school I was a seasoned LiveJournal blogger who wrote angsty freewrites and poetry about love, friendship, and the trials and tribulations of being a teenager, but that, my friends, is not real blogging.

I've started to learn about what constitutes "real blogging" this semester in my Public Affairs Reporting class. Our teacher, Professor Stevens, had us create blogs on the first day of class, and every few days we write a journalism-related post (they vary from week-to-week based on what we're learning about in class).

While I've enjoyed blogging about the state of the modern media and Rathergate in my Public Affairs Reporting blog, each time I've posted for the class I've found myself wanting to write more, to post again about a related topic. Or I read about something in the news, find myself shocked by it, and can't help but think, "I should be blogging about this," like yesterday when I read in Seattle Times article that passengers flying on Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air can now check in using their cell phones. And although it scares me, lately I even want to blog about the future of the media or what my future holds.

So I created this blog as a way to do that. Not all of the posts will be serious--later today or tomorrow I'd like to write about the movie, Valentine's Day, and how romantic movies affect our perception of love--but I ultimately created this blog so that I could break through the noise that the media and advertisers overwhelm us with each day and express my own views.

American journalist H.L. Mencken once said, "The duty of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," and I believe his credo still holds true today. However, many modern day journalists have gotten a bad rap for allegedly forgetting about this duty (although, after looking through journalism quotes in "The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations," it seems as though this problem may not have developed as recently as we'd like to think).

A journalist's primary duty today is to tell the truth and speak out about the injustices they observe in today's world, as well as to be a voice for the voiceless, and that's exactly what I intend to do as a journalist--to follow in the footsteps of journalism's greatest whistleblowers. It is my hope that with the help of other future journalists, we may restore the media's credibility and regain society's trust.