Bloggers "inadequate, pimpled, single"

Photograph by funkypancake

I have just come from a lecture in which my lecturer contradicted himself big time.

He started by commending a person in the lecture for his work on BlogPreston, he said that he was very impressed by the site.

In the lecture we were talking about specialist journalists, those in the industry who write about one particular thing such as sport, health education or fashion and he mentioned blogs.

He said he wouldn’t trust a blogger over an established journalist as he doesn't want to read the opinions of someone who is not a trusted journalist. He practically agreed with what Andrew Marr said last month when he described bloggers as "inadequate, pimpled and single."

This contradicts almost everything I have been taught over the last year and a half!

Firstly in another module we were told to set up a blog and that blogging is an important tool in the changing world of journalism. Also I have always been told by an editor of a local newspaper that if you can't get work published somewhere publish it yourself so that is what I do in my blog.

After saying that he wouldn’t trust a blogger the lecturer gave us some tips on how to become a good specialist journalist and guess what one of his suggestions was.....

That we write a blog!!!

He either thinks blogging is a good idea or doesn't - he can’t have it both ways!

As for Andrew Marr's opinions on Blogging and citizen journalism, if it wasn't for the latter, news companies like the BBC wouldn’t have had many of the news stories such as the 7/7 bombings that they have had as quickly if it wasn’t for citizen journalists.

Also I am a blogger, I am not pimpled, I have been told that I have good skin on a few occasions, also I am not single. Finally and most importantly, I should hope that I am not inadequate as I am paying a lot of money for my journalism degree and I wouldn’t be doing so if I thought my degree would be wasted!