I read a nice article today on News24.com about blogging by Benedict Kelly, since it's been a hot topic in the South African cyberspace after David Bullard wrote his little tirade on blogging and Patricia De Lille has been outspoken about censorship of blogs. And it's nice to see someone actually doing some thinking and investigation before spewing out some garbage about a subject they know very little about.
To quote the first few paragraphs of Defending the blog:
I FEEL sorry for the poor old blog.
Over the past few months, every Tom, Patricia and David have been tearing strips off blogs, calling for them to be censored or saying that "the authors of offensive blogs should be hunted down like dogs".
The sadness is that in the mad rush for professional columnists to defend their turf against "people who won't stand a hope in hell of getting a job in journalism, mainly because they have very little to say," and politicians who want to protect the poor innocents against the dangers of the big bad internet, no-one has taken the time to understand what blogging really is.
I definitely think that Benedict Kelly hit the nail on the head with this article. He's accurately portrayed what blogging really is about and who the "real" bloggers are. I can remember reading David Bullard's column on the Sunday Times site, and saying to myself, "but I don't do any of that, and I don't fit his supposed blogger profile!"
