Why Am I Here?

So, why the switch to Movable Type? Why move the blog to the front of this site and move away from the photoblog model I’d been developing back on the old site? What’s the point of all this?

Well, it’s all down to a conversation I had on Livejournal with Malcolm. It was about journalists, their behaviour and their collusion with politicians.

It was an odd conversation, simply because as I read it, I realised that many people have very little idea how journalists really work. Malcolm was talking in general terms about the proprietor dictating how the journalists reported a story. To Malcolm, they’re just the faceless employees of a foreign newspaper. To me, some of the journalists are people I’ve worked with and socialised with. That, naturally, gives me a slightly different perspective on things.

We journalists are terrible at talking about what we do. We’re happy to hide behind the stereotypes of pissed old hack (one I often play up to) and sexy, dynamic young journalist. In the meantime, people of all political stripes start building up strange pictures of why the reports of the same event differ so much from paper to paper, magazine to magazine. With no true picture of the nature of the job, it’s very easy for people to start constructing conspiracy theories. Well, I’ve been a working hack for the best part of a decade now. I might as well put that experience to some use in blogging some of my experiences and thoughts on the issue, and I’ll be doing that in coming weeks.

Reading back through my Livejournal entries and blogs passim, it’s amazing how little I’ve written about my professional life. I think I’ve tended to play to my audience which has, on the whole, been the slightly geeky (sorry lads and lassies) followers of the roleplay business, along with a few British friends involved with the live action version of the hobby. It’s time for that to change.

The photoblog aspect of the site will remain – the ability to categorise posts is one of the reasons I switched to MT – and no doubt I’ll get sucked into politics, too. Purely personal stuff will remain in my Livejournal.

I hope you enjoy what’s coming.