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Blog-girls Discussing: Journalism and Blogging Create Endless Chain Together

Editor’s note: Student Anna Barseghyan of the Department of Journalism of Yerevan State University (YSU) together with her friends and active bloggers Shushan Harutyunyan and Lusine Paravyan from the same department recently have discussed the following question at CJTeam request: does blogging help or impede the journalist in his/her professional activity? Studying at the same building, today the girls “meet” in virtual world more frequently due to the internet. For this reason Anna organized the discussion in her personal blog.



Today blogs stand as alternative means for the media and bloggers –for journalists. The reasons are various: today there are more interesting and exclusive materials in the blogs than in the traditional media. Very often the most significant events appear in the blogs. The author is free expressing his/her opinion; there is no censorship, etc. And it is not without reason that some blogs have more readers than many traditional and internet newspapers of Armenia.

Often the bloggers are not journalists, though the number of blogger-journalists is growing. Shushan Harutyunyan is famous by the name Blansh in virtual world. 21-year-old Shushan has recently graduated from YSU’s Department of Journalism with bachelor's degree. Apart from being an active journalist, she has been also one of the most active bloggers (if not the most active one) among the YSU students. Blansh could be met also almost in all the social networks where she is always active. Since the second year Blansh has been coordinating also the blog of one of the most famous information websites of Armenia A1Plus(http://a1plus.wordpress.com/).

Shushan – Blansh – considers herself a journalist-blogger without separating the two from each other and since the first year she hasn’t imagined her life without the Internet. Shushan says blogging helps in work as it provides a direct contact and removes the wall between the journalist and the reader.

“Internet developments made information more available and open, that is, you, as a journalist should compete with civilian journalists on equal terms, who, by the way, could afford them freedom of expression, literally, and you should try at least to catch up with them, as far as journalism is no longer the media monopoly. What can we - journalists - do in this case? Should we use the same methods, the same tools?” writes Blansh.

Another active blogger among the Armenian students is the same year student Lusine Paravyan – Moon(Lusin translated from Armenian means Moon). She too is active in almost all social networks famous in Armenia. Moon says she had opened her first blog just as a notebook.

“Gradually when the list of my friends grew in LiveJournal, I understood that I should open the second one where I could be just a blogger. It’s quite another world for me,” writes Moon. Her second blog is more popular. Here she discusses environmental issues, particularly on the protection of Teghut forests. However any kind of topic she is interested in becomes a new post in the blog. She is sure that blogging will never impede the journalist, but it only contributes to professional activities.

“You always write it doesn’t matter what. It is important that you write and feel you are thirsty to write,” says Moon. Whereas according to Blansh blogging will have no quality if one is not on journalist's busy schedule and doesn't see with his own eyes what he writes about in his blog.

“I am inclined to think that no matter how “proficient” one is in computer keyboard, however, he should have a topic, examples and direct presence. Finally one writes also about his personal emotions and impressions on the same event which is covered by the standard media too, and if the reader doesn't want to get guided information with no facts, he visits us in the blog,” writes Blansh.

“Thus journalism and blogging are not so far from each other especially that various topics can be taken from the blogs, be investigated and written about for the traditional media, then be posted for blog-discussion again and taken once more to traditional media… - an endless chain.”

The bloggers wages was written about by Blansh only. She thinks that editors in Armenia don’t yet estimate the bloggers’ job in a proper way.

“And the source of income remains the traditional media,” writes Blansh and adds, “in other words I am not earning through blogging yet. Even such media organization as A1+, which possesses developed on-line tools, can’t assign adequate payment for blogging, simply because the bloggers' off-post job (leaving comments in other blogs, following the statistics and ranking systems, writing personal letters to the blog activists to keep them in the blog, promoting the topic in other platforms, etc.) is not considered as a job yet.

Source: JNews.am, Student's Eye Column

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