Covering Indian Country Blog

Notes from the Road

To blog or not to blog?

Three days into our cross-country trip and the group is split. Not along lines of native v. nonnative or print v. radio/TV, but blog v. nonblog.

Some of the journalists here have this idea that we should maintain standards that don’t lend themselves to blogs.

There’s also the argument that blogs go against journalistic training of maintaining objectivity. One reporter pointed out that a flippant blog remark could come back and bite you in the rear.

I’ll share two thoughts on the topic. One is that a journalist can reach expert status when she spends years covering a subject. At this point, objectivity is an ideal, but not a reality. I’m human and I won’t pretend not to form opinions. I’ll stand behind them and am not afraid to share them.

Second, blogs can be fun. Our tour guide at the National Museum of the American Indian, Phillip Hillaire, a Lummi, at one point said, “Humor is a really important part of our culture. We’ve had it for a long time.”

This seminar so far has been interesting and packed with facts, with a certain stress on the importance and urgency of some of the issues in Indian Country. The blog is a way of highlighting the lighter side of things.

Don’t all cultures like to laugh and appreciate a look at the lighter side of things? Look at what many people turn to first in the newspaper: the comics.

--Jill Ingram, Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times

Posted on 03.10.05 at 2:57 AM by Victor Merina