Gloria Ferris

For quite some time now the question of “what is a blogger?” has been swirling through the blogosphere.  Is a blogger a journalist? If not, who or what is a blogger?  The comparisons to traditional journalists abound, but none of the defiinitions that other bloggers and journalists have offered seemed to fit me.  Now, if you use a strict definition of journalist which would be one who writes a journal that could be me, but I probably would  be more like a diarist, but you see that isn’t quite right either because recording the daily temperature and weather as so many diarists did throughout history just isn’t my style  Am I a journalist in the news media genre? Probably not.  I am much more opinionated than a writer who is fascinated by the facts and figures of a certain subject and although I may report on participatory events I too often add color commentary to be considered any kind of reporter.  Neither do I purport to be an expert on any one subject.  So journalist, no.  But then I am still left with “blogger”.  And just what is that and how do I fit?

A year ago, bloggers were compared to the early pamphleteers during the Revolutionary War years.   Now, that appealed to me, but with the end of that war and the issue at hand those pamphlets and pamphleteers died out.  Of course, Tom Paine and “Common Sense” still live on today and still have historical merit that can still be applied.  I don’t want to burn brightly, and then, die out. 

And that, dear friends, is where I find myself today. Last February, Judith and Bill Moyers, he being chairman of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and an independent journalist with his own production company, were presented an award by  the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Go here, to read the excerpt from his acceptance speech that gave rise to this post.  It is well worth the read even though it is quite long.  But I have excerpted two quotes that fit with my definition of what I blog, why I blog and how I perceive my role as a blogger.

The gist of Mr. Moyer’s remarks focused on the role that history and literature play in our lives and how and why they are important.  This quote hit me like a ton of bricks:

 “Some members of Congress got it. They realized that we were talking not only about how to improve our lives as individuals but how to nurture a flourishing democracy. Wouldn’t we have been likely to deal more effectively and quickly with pollution if we had thought about where we fit in the long sweep of the Earth’s story? Could we better tackle our spending priorities as a society if we were prepared to acknowledge and confront the pain of conflicting choices, which the ancient poets knew to be the incubus of agony and the crucible of wisdom? Might we better decide how to use our wealth and power if we have measured and tested ourselves against the greatest things a human being ever uttered? Are we not likely to be more wisely led by officials who have learned from history and literature that great nations die of too many lies?

I believe that truth is necessary today more than ever.  Recently, someone told me, “but the public doe not want to know the truth”.  I disagree.  I think that, given the truth, the collective wisdom of the public will shine through and we will not repeat the mistakes of the past but be able to learn from our history and be better for it.  In fact, I think that the public is disgusted that an elite few have decided that the public can’t handle the truth, and that it should be left to think tanks and experts–those who know better.  I say “poppycock”.

And then there was this quote that really spoke to me because I have never felt that blogging should be the last stop but rather the starting place of new conversations, new thoughts and ideas, and leaders emerging where we would not expect.  We stand at a horizon that may be even more exciting than the ones that the pioneers surveyed during the manifest destiny years.  We may truly be experiencing our manifest destiny now.  Wouldn’t that be wonderful?  And here is the quote:

“The public is no fiction, Carey said. The public had no life, no social relationships, without news. The news was what activated conversation between strangers, and strangers were assumed to be capable of conversing about the news. In fact, the whole point of the press was not so much to disseminate fact as to assemble people. The press furnished materials for argument—“information,” in the narrow sense—“but the value of the press was predicated on the existence of the public, not the reverse.” The media’s role was humble but serious, and that role was to take the public seriously. “

And as a blogger, I related to these words as though they had been written for me. So am I a blogger?  Yes, but I think from now on I will consider myself undertaking the ancient, critical task of the public intellectual.  I am constantly amazed at how many things come full circle with the internet.  Tim and I took a trip in early October and ended up in Staunton, VA, the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson. Then, I came home to a plethora of emails that I needed to sort through, but didn’t. The other day I was searching my mail on the word “morrison”, stumbled on the email from a friend that included the excerpt about Bill Moyers,  saw the name Woodrow Wilson, stopped and took the time to read it, and suddenly, the answers about blogging became clear.

I do it because I want to share thoughts and ideas with others.  Do I always succeed? I don’t know, so few people comment here, and I refuse to be dominated by numbers so I stay away from my stats, but I do know that stimulating discussion and thought and adding a viewpoint that is not as narrowly focused as some others  to me is enough.  Maybe, it’s enough that what I write has made me think about things. I really suggest that you click thru to read the entire excerpt located at http://www. tompaine.commonsense.com because these words were spoken by a true journalist.

After all, I am just a woman with a veiw who lives by the zoo. But today, and until further notice, I am a public intellectual who blogs and that, folks, is my definition of a blogger. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Cleveland, developing community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.