Intro to Conformity 101

It was always something held sacred. Hidden under your matress or in some other unthinkable place. You knew no one would ever read it and it was that very fact that allowed you to be as candid as you needed. Maybe more open than you'd been with any living breathing thing in this world. It was a journal. And the internet killed it. And honestly I can't say I'm sad. Instead now we can write our thoughts in posts that maybe all of 10 people will actually read. But thats more than an audience of 180 spiral bound pages. And now we can use media to support our points, and write about things that actually matter externally.

I'm conforming. About four years late too. But it had to happen sometime. What made me decide to join the universe of "Web Logging"? A first ammendment press conference did. One that spoke of shield laws and their varying protection of journalists. The problem with these shield laws has become: Who is a journalist? There are obvious answers, but advances in technology have done more than open some doors. They have blown the door right off its hinges. Me and the BILLIONS of other bloggers are just as much journalists as the entire staff of the New York Times, maybe even more so. We can give honest or dishonest opinions whenever we want, live, up to the moment. And shield laws have begun to acknowledge this.

As an aspiring journalist I am finally intrigued by the concept of writing about anything whenever the moment strikes. And some of my closest friends have more brilliant content in their blogs than most of the half-assed published articles you can find in a newspaper or magazine. My friend Joey posted a series of pictures that as he said are worth "a billion words". Pictures that struck me more than any column I've read in a paper, or any segment I have seen on TV. That's when it hit me. It doesn't matter who or how big your audience is. The power to strike one person, whether they laugh, cry, or simply scratch their heads, is what this is all about...if you want it to be. Hell, you can blog a grocery list for yourself as far as I'm concerned. Nothing this simple, yet versatile has struck me in a very long time, if ever. And even though I may be WAY behind the eight ball, you can never be too late. So here I come.