Everyone wants to be a writer

Why is blogging taking the world by storm? Even the traditional media has given in; The Financial Times admitted this week that the blogosphere had done a better job than themselves in drawing attention to another evil deed from the Googleplex: “Google.cn came in for some harsh criticism from bloggers, outraged at its decision to sensor its Chinese site”. To be fair this article is a kind of this-week-in-blogs piece, but it hilights gaping oversights in traditional journalism.

I personally don’t read newspapers or watch TV news chanels anymore, which is why I was so surprised when I picked up a copy of The Sunday Telegraph at my Mothers apartment. I tried to read a piece about Sir. Richard Branson in the business section and couldn’t make any sense of the figures involved in his latest Virgin Mobile dealings. The light only dawned when I realised the entire paper is printed without special characters! Every time the auther wants to write 1.2% he has to resort to 1.2pc and £30.4bn becomes 30.4bn p. I’m assuming this is a workaround for an issue with the simultaneous publishing in print and web, but can The Telegraph not invest enough in IT to parse special characters from its columnists without crippling their print edition?

Alright I admit the range of topics coverd by bloggers right now is a little tech heavy, it’s not a replacement source of general news yet, but it has the potential to be so much more! Go and google ‘collective inteligence’ and you’ll see what I’m talking about.