A mainstreamer crosses over
From my friend Tish Grier this morning comes an e-mail with news that GMA-7, the Philippines’ number one television network, has launched a network of blogs via their Website, gmanews.tv. Editor-in-Chief Malou Mangahas has a blog and, while her English is a little jumbled, writes of the company’s decision to get into “professional” blogging. Her thoughts are not only eloquent but spot on.
We will, on the Web, on television, on radio, on print, according to journalism’s time-honored standards of accuracy (get it right), fairness and balance (get all sides). We will, with all due respect to, and admiration for, probloggers.
Yes, in the beginning, blogs were conceived to be personal sites. Vanity sites sometimes. Blogs challenged a few tenets of journalism that in the beginning, the biggest and best media agencies of the world took the path of caution.
In time, however, these media agencies and the most creditable journalism institutes realized that the blogosphere is a platform too important for media to ignore. In time, their blog sites rolled in a series, and we are all the better informed for this.
There are bloggers and there are journalists and… ne’er the twain shall meet? On the Web, the twain have met, crossed, and now run on parallel tracks many times over.
The written word unites us, and write we must all, for our readers.
I’m not sure that traditional mainstreamers in the U.S. have closed the gap quite as completely as Ms. Mangahas appears to have, but it sure is refreshing to find this kind of thinking anywhere it appears. Here, it’s very much a case-by-case deal, but more and more newspapers, television and radio stations do appear to be getting into the world of the blog.
“The written word unites us, and write we must all…” How terribly satisfying it is for an old blogger like myself to read such a line from a leader in mainstream journalism — and now blogger — such as Ms. Mangahas.
(thanks, Tish)
January 24th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
you’re welcome Terry! I was so excited about this blog when I read it–for Malou’s perspective, where she is, what she does for a living (that so many women don’t seem to be able to aspire to…) Her vision is quite amazing, and I knew you’d see it too.