To blog or not to blog

It seems everyone's doing it these days, blogging that is. The rise of the internet blog is probably one of the fastest known phenomena for people getting themselves exposure as a writer and then going on to successfully author a book.

I'm not sure, as a journalist, whether I think that's a good idea. It circumnavigates the ridiculous amount of hoops most journalists have jumped through just to get themselves a career in an industry which is plagued with celebrity columnists earning three times as much as Joe or Josephine Reporter who are out slogging their way through council meetings, court reporting and the other minute that make up life as a weekly local newspaper journalist.

When I started work, at the age of 18 - having failed all but my General Studies A Level through a serious lack of revision and a much inflated opinion of how I'd be able to wing them as I had my O Levels (five Grade C, two CSE Grade 1 and a couple of CSE Grade 2s) - life as a journalist was a fairly simple one.
I'd go out into the town where I'd lived all my life, chat to people I knew, listen to rumours in the pub, and write what they call off diary stories, the ones that don't come via a press release or public body. We got lots of exclusive stories this way, although I still smart about the guy who got hit on the head with a piece of roofing slate thrown off by some council workmen not using a safety shoot - he phoned the wrong newspaper back and his story went in the rival free sheet.

Still, I had 20 years doing a job I love, including two in London, and I don't regret any of it, but I'm really glad to not be working in the industry now. It's a time of crisis for a lot of newspaper groups, falling advertising revenue, the increasing rise of home bloggers and what they call community journalists, who write their own blogs or who send in their local news free to places like the BBC website, and the rise of the global 24 hour news phenomenon itself.