A close friend of mine, A.S, started a blog (that I shall not name) in June 2006. This is NOT a story of how a blog managed to shoot to fame; one day with three followers and the next day with 5,000, no; this is not that kind of story. But… five years on, she has just over 300 followers and approximately 2400 views, which is no small feat.
Her blog, which states, “Repatriation to a borrowed patria: politics, adventure, and life in the United Arab Emirates...with a few stops along the way” talks about the various interesting things that happen everyday in the little country she and I call home. While not all of her postings can be considered journalistic, she did report on the happenings of our town, things that you couldn’t read in the newspaper. More over, her work landed her a job with a new national newspaper.
In a short period of time she went from budding-citizen journalist to professional journalist. What an ideal opportunity to bring the peoples views to the people. The newspaper promised to be a fresh and an uncensored look at the news in a country where all other newspapers are either government owned or strictly controlled to government standards.
A.S was initially given free reign to write as she pleased about anything in our hometown. Bit by bit editors started to cut more and more from her articles, and soon she was told what and what not to write about. With this, A.S happily returned to blogging, as most people in the UAE still do for honest information.
In “Exploring The Second Phase of Public Journalism” J. Nip writes “participatory journalism represents an attempt of news media to incorporate the change in relationship between professional journalism and the people made inevitable by technological change, and as championed by public journalism.”
An attempt and ‘fail’ on the part of this newspaper. Clearly these changes will not come about until some changes are made in the government. And how would the people bring about these changes if they are not well informed? We can only hope that more people turn to citizen journalism and make that necessary change.
- Nip, J. (2006). 'Exploring The Second Phase of Public Journalism, In Journalism Studies, 7 (2). 212-236.
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