MIDEGA: Making a case for blogging and the freedom it offers
It is 2014 and I dare say that the shelf life of the modern hardback is somewhere between that of unpasteurised milk and unbottled spirit.
It is in blogging that the real art lies. This is the home of literary freedom that churns a wealth of sarcasm, alliteration and wordplay only surpassed by fellow bloggers.
But blogging can be like marriage to men. In it, you should never really commit until you are sure you can stand criticism. Yet blogging allows democracy in writing.
Newspapers gather facts and weigh sales opportunities against production costs to create an equilibrium that factors in both reader sustainability and sales returns. In the business, facts are pivotal, but selling the paper is sacrosanct.
By the time the paper reaches the reader’s desk, the stories have seen more changes than the strands of the news presenter’s hair.
In Britain, freedom of the press is freedom to print as much of the proprietor’s prejudices as the advertisers can take, so they say.
Bloggers are the avant-garde of writing — the Pablo Picassos and Leonardo Da Vincis of the pen.
Blogging could easily turn a minuscule rebellious thought into a public opinion that eventually spins to bring about an even worse political situation.
It happened in Maghreb Africa not too long ago. Online access is tightly restricted in China because the government recognises the unquantifiable force in blogging.
Ultimately, to many readers the Internet is the cheaper alternative to mainstream media, and to writers it gives the opportunity to criticise mainstream media.
Writers are like the Kenyan politician, perpetually yearning to be heard, and engulfed by a sense of inadequacy when they don’t get to fully express their ideas.
Today we celebrate the Internet and the level of catharsis it has brought to many unpublished writers.
frank.midega@gmail.com