The "New Media" in Danger of Becoming the Old Media"???

Have we bloggers fallen into a trap unwittingly set for us by the politically correct Mainstream Media?

Nearly all the blogs I have read, and I surf between 100 to 125 blogs a day, have used the word “immigrant” when referring to the “illegals” in our country. It seems to me… the “old” term is more nearly correct… “Illegal Aliens”.

True, “Illegal Alien” is NOT politically correct. But it is ACCURATE.

Accuracy is one of the virtues the Mainstream Media has tossed overboard in their all out drive to be politically correct.

You see, back when a “spade” was a “spade” and people spoke honestly, “illegal alien” was the term used to describe those who entered this country by any means less than legal. It also describes those who do not wish to assimilate into American society, but remain apart… or alien… from the American society. It reliably describes those who are interested only in leeching money from this country and sending that money back to their homeland, to which, they still owe allegiance.

I think too many bloggers who wish to invite acceptance by the Mainstream Media have adopted entirely too much of the MSM’s less than honest terminology.

Look, we (Bloggers) are supposed to be the “NEW MEDIA” yet we all to easily adopt the mistakes of the Old Media. For many of us “Pamphleteers”, on the Internet, that was the very thing, which drove us to the Web in the first place.

Isn’t it about time we stepped back a few paces and took an objective look at what we are doing and why we are doing it, and the way we are doing it, and drop the trappings of the “Old Media” and be what we started out to be…. Independent purveyors of opinion and truth as accurately as it is possible to package and present it on our blog sites?

So much of the impact of blogging is its instantaneous nature, unhampered by editors, who insist upon following the company’s template for the news or opinion. If we lose that, we will have lost so very much of our reason for existence that we will be as useless as the "Old Media".

The good news is that we can stop this trend right now. We don’t have to call a meeting of the editorial board, or the board of directors, or the stockholders. No, we simply have to vow, to ourselves, that we will remember how we got here and what our aims and goals were from the first day we put the first word of our blog onto the web. That should be enough.

We must be careful not to become a symbiotic creature as is the "Old Media". In other words, we should not feed off each other. The MSM, or "Old Media", has just that sort of relationship with each other. Don’t believe me? Switch between the various news outlets on TV, and Cable, and you will see the same stories... sometime with near identical wording. The printed media draws so much of it’s content from the few wire services and news services that they have the same problem. They are all reporting the same stories in the same way. It’s stale, it’s boring, and it’s mind numbing. Those of us who have had careers in the media know this first hand.

If we are, in fact, the New Media, then let us be new, interesting, exciting, informative, and above all, honest.

The Internet, like nature, abhors a vacuum. The pioneers of the blogoshere identified a gaping vacuum in the Internet and moved to fill that vacuum. Those of us who follow in their footsteps should do everything in our power to ensure the vibrancy of the blogoshere.

The blogosphere is a powerful tool for the common man or woman. I hope we all recognize the power we hold and make very effort to avoid abusing it and misusing it.

Don’t mean to be preachy; I just thought it was about time for an old fashioned “gut-check”.

Blog on!

Longstreet