Morning meandering of thought...evening enlightenment

Well, there I was, travelling to work this morning...well Husband of Mine was acting as chauffeur bless, allowing me those wonderful vague meanderings of thought during my morning commute without the babble of the general public around me... and I had what I thought to be one of those lightbulb moments...a flash of creativity...

It went along the lines of 'hmmmm...Blogging could be thought of as journalism by the public for the public....'

When I got home this evening I thought I'd do the old Wikipedia search as to what the definition of journalism was and found this:

"Journalism is the craft of conveying news, descriptive material and comment via a widening spectrum of media. These include newspapers, magazines, radio and television, the internet and even, more recently, the cellphone (or mobile phone)...."

It went on to say...

'...The rapid rise of Internet technology, in particular the advent of blogging and social networking software, further destabilize journalism as traditionally understood and its practitioners as a distinct professional category. Combined with the increasing leakage of advertising revenue from pre-existing journalistic media into the internet, the full impact of the arrival of the citizen journalist—potentially positive (proliferation having thus far proved more difficult to police) as well as negative—is yet to be seen.'

Once I got past my initial reaction to the thought of destabilizing journalism (?????) I clicked the link attached to 'Citizen Journalist'....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalist

A rather interesting read (well I thought so :) ) ...

So, my lightbulb moment wasn't unique..sad but true...(a little bit like early humans on different continents making fire or similar tools from bits of their environment without being able to see what the others have done....) More importantly though, it took me on a brief but informative journey that makes me feel like I'm a small player in a bigger game... I may not be a trained or experienced journalist, but it doesn't put journalism beyond my reach, any more than not being a fully trained artist or singer put drawing or singing outside my reach, although I do feel some sympathy for those who have to read, view or listen...remember folks... practice makes perfect ;)

Hmmm....'citizen journalist'... I like that! Think that may work its way into my header somewhere... :)

My very first blog...

Well hello out there...!

This is my first blog - nothing earth shattering unfortunately... it's like one of those moments when someone says 'sing something!' and you're lucky if you can remember the words to the National Anthem...(wow! that takes me back around 30 years to a school trip to the South of France - I was around 14 years old and yep - someone said that to me, and yep...I just about remembered the National Anthem...)

Over the years I've tried to keep diaries - I'm not a great diarist though... days, weeks, even months can pass between entries... also, there's something a little unnerving about the marvelous potential of a new book - those lovely crisp, clean pages that intially attracted me to purchasing it become intimidating...what should I write!?!? What if I make a spelling mistake or write complete gobbledygook....!! Arrrrggghhhhh!!!!

So, this is my attempt at a more fluid way of capturing those little insights, vague ramblings and the odd observations but via electronic means with the added benefit of text editing and spell checkers...no terrible handwriting either! I think the Tweets and Facebook updates will still pepper my days - but let's have a go at adding another dimension shall we!

Welcome to The Jottings of Jaxter...let the blogging begin!