Jesse Says: Everyone Is a Journalist

Contributor: Jesse Oguns is a digital maniac and incurable connector, who seeks to help individuals and businesses to leverage mobile and web to create value. You can follow him on twitter – @JesseOguns, and do check out his blog – The Brand Evangelist.

There is an article I read on gawker about folks who want to be guards of the online publishing platform—blogs. Gawker called them out and made a fool of them. The number of connected devices and different easy to use online publishing platforms has giving more people a voice. This is like a treat to the traditional and professional media houses.

Anyone with a computer and internet connection can start online publishing within minutes, all for free. The quality of information being thrown out there has made many well trained professional journo to cry foul. According to the report in Gawker, they are trying to set up a body that will guide, publish a code of ethical conduct and regulate online publishing—blogging.

Gawker went on to say, blogging is a platform that can and will regulate itself. If someone writes a thesis, someone who thinks it is wrong cam write an antithesis or another can come up with synthesis.

I have observed this happening too. There are times when folks here in Nigeria will write an opinion piece and someone else will come up with a rejoinder and then counter rejoinder. This is what Gawker was talking about the online publishing regulating itself.

There is a need for many of those who have found their voice easily using blogging platforms to know how best to do it in order to get value out of it and deliver value. That is why from the 13th  of March to 16th of March 2012 – starts today, the Goethe Institute is presenting a workshop that is designed to enable participants from a wide range of professional background to effectively employ digital media tools in their work. The workshop is going to be rich. We hope to bring you some thrills of what happens there. If you are not going to make it, just relax.

You see, everyone is now a journalist. We all have stories to share and have digital tools that can help us tell the stories. The traditional media platforms do not own the news and stories anymore.

Every single company on earth today is a media company. Hence, there is need to know how to use digital media tools to manage brand and tell your story. A trained journalist may not be able to tell your own story better than you. It will do your startup some good if you start learning how to position your brand by managing information flow and spread. That is what the journalists do.

 

Image Credit – Kevin Sites Cartoon

 

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