Considering that I’m among the old veteran bloggers, I’ve seen how the news medium of blogging has developed this past decade. When I started blogging about ten years ago, it was new, very new. A few years before that I had begun writing and emailing short articles about real life here in Shiloh in the face of Arab terror. My mailing list grew, and I knew that I had made it when my own article came back in the mailing a friend had sent out to her mailing list.
When I began writing my thoughts, “musings,” I had hoped that I’d somehow manage to get them into some newspaper or magazine and get paid for them. I did get my articles in a few publications, but they didn’t pay me. Soon many of the Jewish publications changed policy and rarely paid for op-eds, personal pieces by “unknowns.” That was me.
In addition to that, even for free, it’s not all that simple to get an op-ed piece in the mainstream media. An opinion editor of a major paper told me that I can submit what I want and it can take ten days for them to decide. Quite a number of years ago, it took a couple of months until I discovered that my article had been published. Since one of the main purposes of my blogging was to get my message out, and I couldn’t count on the mainstream media for it, and many articles are although always interesting reading, passed their expiration date when it comes to current news, being an independent blogger is the best.
And there are news sites that welcome people to blog on them. They each have different requirements and restrictions. In some cases I’ve been given free choice and access to the site to post my blog posts. Some of those news sites allow me to re-post what had been on my blog with a link to it. Other news sites insist on original articles, although they don’t pay for them. And another news site copies my articles/posts from my blogs. Lately the Jewish Press has been posting many of my blog posts.
To make things more interesting, I as blog “owner” here have given a few people access to my blog to post whatever they wish. Before Arlene Kushner had a site, I used to copy her mailings and post them on this blog, with her permission of course. Ellen of Jewish Israel has been posting on this blog for years, even before she started that site.
I’m made peace with the fact that I’m not going to get rich writing, certainly not from my political articles. And writing for me is like breathing out the CO2. It keeps me sane. But still, sometimes I feel like I’m wasting my time, and then a reader, frequently a total stranger, tells me that they love my writing and agree with me. I help new bloggers and now run the two most veteran Jewish blog carnivals Havel Havelim and Kosher Cooking Carnival. They keep me in the international community of Jewish bloggers. I also participate in JPIX and more recently in the Jewish Book Carnival.
And I must admit that I signed up with facebook and twitter for the sole purpose of promoting my blogs. Are you a blogger? And why yes or no?
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