David Bullard fears being perfectly cloned?

Eish, David David David. Always in the spotlight. But I love you still because you are funny and a good writer and liberal!

That's all I should be saying and nothing more regarding David Bullard’s column on blogging and the ill-thought parallels he draws in his 'professional' journalist column. I, for one, have joined the blogosphere and for reasons other than those mentioned by David. And therefore, defending myself against David's scathing attack is pointless. But as me, Israel, as some have gotten to know, I always got a word or two to say about anything. So here we go, and yes, David, you don't have to read through this one mundane junk:

Classified mission
1. Blogging to me, and to some other bloggers, MAY not be TOO MUCH but a great past time filled with simple fantasies of being a good writer to oneself. Think of a daily journal where thoughts are put down. And in the vast infinite cyberspace, you don't really count on the David's of this world to read you and praise you. But now I will count on them shaming some bad bloggers, which by the way, I advise you don't do as you will earn the charf, as Mike Stopforth puts it, a lot of free traffic. But I would love that un-earned for this bad blog of mine. But I more than blog to fill up my time, I’m doing something else – that I mustn’t mentioned lest I blow my classified mission.

Unilateral
2. Bloggers, like me (even though I'm pretty much a newbie as opposed to my friends like youngBLOOD and Vincent Maher), do not aspire to become SA's top journalists selling cars for the Aston Martin’s and the SUVs of this world or having a prime column in the paper with heavy-hard-to-understand words in every sentence - I stopped reading Out to Lunch after I needed a dictionary by my side although I past English damned well at school and varsity. And again, I'm a Sunday Times trained-and-once-paid journalist so I wouldn't be, as a blogger, be having wet dreams of being a print journalist. I know the taste, and will come back when the time is right and blogging will not have eroded the skill I learnt at the Sunday Times under masterful mentors, whom I hope to respect the wheat-bloggers. The long and short: bloggers, at least the wheat of them, don't wish to become journalists, particularly in print, but I'm sure they are so flexible and less unilateral that they wouldn't mind joining the online versions of the SA papers. Evidently David would mind to blog - but read this one interesting beat though:

Open minded in a new media world
3. The editor of the forthcoming The Times - a newspaper of the Sunday Times - Ray Hartley blogs. And according to Prof Anton Harber Ray, of the Wildfrontier, made history as the first South African traditional media boss (editor) to blog. I think Ray is way ahead of the game and less unilateral and is where David may wish to be 10-years later. I hope it won't be too late Dave. And again, nearly half the 'fiery talent' he recruits at The Times is so young, and up with the times that they blog - and I think it's because they see value in it.

Amatomu wheat over charf job
4. Blogosphere surfers/readers choose. You can either read the trash that makes up the large percentage of blogs and waste your time or you can spot quality and good taste and stick to it and have a good laugh or even insight. Just like Dave would with cars - you choose the good over the bad. I don't see him driving any trash because the manufacturers or marketers wanted him to showcase it on national TV. It's got to be worth it. Same goes for blogs and I think that Mike Stopforth put it better when he said, the blog aggregators see the wheat from the charf and AMATOMU does a great job at that and it will evolve, I believe.

School kids
5. Blogs are different animals, different skin. You don't get 12-year olds working at the Sunday Times, but you do have unpaid school-going children blogging about the mundane and trivia that makes up their days because, blogging is free. Once again, you got to know what's worth reading and not.


Gotta catch up baby, or eat dust
6. Technology and the web have changed the world of communications and media in so many ways and it has impacted on print. So much that the Sunday Times keeps revisiting the blog subject, albeit through contradicting voices (which is good for debate), that nearly for the past month, blog was mentioned in all the prints. In the magazine of the 29th April, the second lead feature, the most prominent and interesting, was on blogging and that it is the next big thing and that SA has caught up and that 'here are some few tips on how to make it worthy and make money out of it' - read: preserve it and nurture it.

I'm a trained journalist and untrained blogger
7. I don't imagine, for the SA blogosphere, that the likes of Ray Hartley, Prof Anton Harber, Vincent Maher, Colin Daniels, Matthew Buckland, Israel Mlambo (yes, that's me), all trained in Media and Journalism at varying levels - and journalists in their own right, in the past or current – would blog if all they were doing was wasting time on the mundane whilst hoping that David Bullard would give them a call to submit their CVs.

Pity I was playing Eminem’s Lose Yourself when I wrote this. I had planned to write only one paragraph but got carried away because I LOVE WRITING. Read by the world or by myself. Dave, every man his own (taste). And know, we are not on a mission to clone you. We prefer you stay one of SA's best columnists. But when the story breaks, we will, at times, break it on the blogosphere before you, roving with our 3.2 mega pixel Sony Ericson camphones pictures.

How I see the Best Blogger List in the next 2-5 years: #1. David Bullard (why, because he sees the fun in anything and is so open-minded that he will catch up fast and surpass any of us bloggers).
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"Judge of a man by his questions, rather than by his answers." - Voltaire