To Blog, To Tweet or To Be Silent

This week has been one of the most incredible weeks in my experience as it relates to journalism and freedom of the press. It has really gotten me to thinking about the importance of the blogosphere, even at a time when we are drowning in internet content and email. I hope that On The Edge Blog is seen as a rising tide that floats all boats rather than a wave of information from which you must swim free.

This week we saw a respected journalist fired for expressing his opinion; we saw a wealthy politico contribute almost two million dollars to an established news organizations to "hire" investigative journalists; we saw a similar million dollar contribution aimed at blunting another established news organization; and we saw two hostesses of a morning television show storm off stage in a disagreement over a guest's point of view. Whatever happened to civilized disagreement and debate?

Thank goodness for the internet - I think! Although it can be a source of propaganda and lies, it is also an equalizing factor in that anyone can get out news and opinion. Reader, beware. Perhaps the problems we are seeing in journalsim is that the internet came to an industry that wasn't accustomed to innovation, and it doesn't know how to react to the technological change and open competition.

Twenty years ago, I would never have imagined being able to share thoughts with readers across the world, let alone be able to establish and maintain a dialog with them. Readers of On The Edge Blog don't always agree with me, but that is ok. I welcome and encourage more online discussion and civil debate.

Those of you who read On The Edge Blog only via email are missing out on half the fun. Visit the website, post replies, look at articles you may have missed, and check out the links on both the left and right sides of the site. Suggest places for me to visit, raise topics to discuss, or visit my website.

One of the greatest values of visiting the site is to read through the replies to my posts. Come back a week after the post comes out and see the list of responses. I'm surprised by the number of responses that are received long after a post goes up because some researcher came across an old post doing a Google search.

As I begin to think about plans for 2011, I'm interested in your thoughts about topics, format and media. As the economy recovers, packagers and machine builders are going to need the best technical and workforce information to remain competitive. Should I continue to blog, should I tweet, should I use LinkedIn groups, or a combination? Should articles be shorter, longer, or more frequent than once or twice per month? Should we include more technical, education, workforce, business, news, or industry topics?

And while you are thinking about that, would anyone be interested in reading the political or current event opinions of a seasoned technologist in a totally new and separate blog? After this week, it seems that someone needs to bring some sanity and civility to the world of journalism! Being silent doesn't seem to me to be the responsible thing to do.

So, Please don't be silent - let me hear from you!

TrackBack

Comments Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style) Type the word 'packaging' (required):