Back in the saddle (or one foot in the stirrups at least)

So, this blog is kind of reactivated, but not really. I started it back in March 2010 as a requirement for a course I was doing as part of my Masters of Media Practice. Now I'm doing another course for my Masters, where contributing to a student blog on online journalism is a requirement for assessment. I'm using this old blogger account to contribute to that, so I don't have to set up another one.

Blogging is being taught in this course as an entry point to online journalism, which I think is an excellent idea. In a nutshell, maintaining a blog teaches you a lot about the front-end and back-end of online content production.

But the idea of maintaining a blog of my own has no personal appeal. For starters, I write all day at work about stuff that I'm interested in and passionate about (thank god), so doing the same in my free time feels a bit redundant, especially when there is so much else to do in our short but rich little lives.

Secondly, the effort level is just way too high, especially when micro-blogging on Twitter is so much more succinct and immediate. And I run Twitter through RockMelt, so it is built into the edge of the browser and I don't even need to open a new tab to participate. Facebook functionality is also built in to RockMelt, so I have all the Facebook feeds I want to keep up with in the browser edge too, as well as some news sites etc. - between Facebook posts and tweets, I'm doing more than enough 'web logging'...

I'm part of the team that manages my work's Facebook and Twitter pages too, and I probably spend more time managing those pages than I do my own. Either way, FB and Twitter are where to find me, not here.