Blogging on

“Most bloggers are unemployed journalists, typing furiously into a void in the hope that someone cares enough to read what they write, screaming at the top of their voices.”

As an unemployed journalist composing my first blog post, it is hard to entirely refute Dylan Jones’s latest column in the Mail on Sunday. But by dismissing bloggers as “bonkers”, it seems to me that Dylan misses one crucial point: just because a blogger is an aspiring journalist with steam pouring from their well-worn keyboard, it doesn’t mean they have nothing worthwhile to contribute.

In We The Media, American technology journalist Dan Gillmor shares his mantra: “There is always someone closer to the story than you.” In this case, Dylan, it is us: the trainees and wannabes of the journalism world. The technological changes taking place within journalism are the biggest media story for centuries, and without the constraints of expectation and experience, without a lifetime allegiance to ageing media models, it is the trainees who are best placed to master and manipulate emerging trends.

We are the generation that grew up alongside the internet, iPods and shrinking mobile phones. We are building our careers at a time when many of the traditional media formats we know and love are on shaky ground, and it is the job of those of us who know our RSS from our elbow to create new ways of working.

After four weeks on the Newspaper Journalism MA at City University, I am in absolutely no doubt that the newspaper industry is entering a new chapter. But I am also in no doubt that we as trainees are the ones closest to the story – whether it comes at us via SMS, YouTube, Twitter, crowdsourcing or some other means that we are yet to invent.

Sorry, Dylan, but with this post it looks as if I have joined the ranks of those furiously-typing unemployed journalists. I’ll try not to scream.