I’m a blogging journalist, ‘writing blogs for nothing, their urge for self-expression obscuring the fact that they are undermining their own employers.’
Never mind that I’m freelance, as are most blogging journalists I know with the exception of the Irish Times journobloggers, who presumably are exempt from Ms Prone’s wrath.
As I said, I’m a freelance. My website at faduda.net showcases articles I’ve written over the years and my latest book, Chaos and Conspiracy. In short, it sells my skills to editors who want to hire me and anyone who wants to buy the book.
And I’ve also turned 200 Word ideas into articles I’ve sold elsewhere. If publishers pay me, they can have my words.
And I do all this without damaging reputations, because contrary to what Terry thinks, the laws of libel apply to me as much as they do to columnists.
What’s more, I do all of this writing what I think, not what a PR guru wants me to think.
Public relations companies Don’t Get New Media. The botched miCandidate launch and Joe Rospar fiasco show clearly how they have misunderestimated bloggers.
Perhaps that’s the real cause of Terry Prone’s ire.
Interesting to see you cite MiCandidate and the Joe Rospars fiasco. I’m a blogging freelance who got invited to launches of both under the “blogger” banner. I got a story in two nationals from the Rospars event and I’m looking a making a few quid out of the MiCandidate situation too…
Prone, as you said, like most PR people and newspaper journalists doesn’t understand the benefits of blogging to newspapers or freelance journalists. To me it’s a way to keep up to date with what is happening in certain niches, get to know people I wouldn’t ordinarily know, I’ve developed some good niche contacts and made a few freinds along the way. It’s a shop front too… I honestly don’t see a downside.
I had to laugh when I read about Rospars. Way back in 1983, when I was a college fresher, I got invited to a discussion on “politics, students and the nation” or somesuch. We arrived to find it was an attempt to set up an FF cumann. An ambitious student had set the meeting up, invited a few honchos from HQ, and sent out a non-commital invitation so the honcho would see his organising skills by the crowd he pulled. Result, a shouting match and some bemused honchos.
some things never change.
Goodnight.