My Blog, My Opinion

Local forum posters have been lambasting another community blogger for voicing his opinions in his blog, which is hosted by a local daily newspaper. These posters erroneously seem to believe that bloggers should check their lives at the door, when, in fact, personal perspective is the point of a blog.

Blogs are not designed to be online impartial news sources, even if a media company sponsors them. It would be more accurate to think of bloggers as Op-Ed columnists than journalistically neutral news writers although a good journalist can be both a news writer and a columnist, winnowing out personal biases when writing a news story and, when appropriate, still contributing their opinions to one or the other side of a good debate.

News writing and opinion writing are two different genres with different styles. In fact, an editor has recently pointed out to me that blogging has its own style that can be hard for traditional writers to develop.

The complaining posters also feel that they have been denied an opportunity to voice their opposing opinions, but they haven’t. There is a comments section located at the end of each blog post to be used at the option of the blogger and the blogger they are criticizing has chosen to allow comments. He even reads them.

And that’s my opinion.

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“A blog is a little first amendment machine.” - Blogger Jay Rosen, June 5, 2007.

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“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.” - Lesley Gore, 1963