Topical Trini Bloggers?
Apr 10th, 2007 by Dre
An interesting post today across at Jumbie’s Watch. With a post entitled Trini Bloggers he is surprised at the topics focused on by the local blogs he has read based on the blog roll of The Manicou Report.
What surprised me is that with so many topical issues that are affecting T&T, like the imposition of a smelter on people who definitely are opposed to it, the runaway crime and police incapability to come up to scratch, corruption, road deaths and road accidents increasing etc., the majority of bloggers can only talk about carnival and to a lesser extent, cricket.
Wonder how long we’ll take to leave the mid-20th century…?
I think their are a couple reasons that you find the majority of current Trini bloggers addressing their current topics and not the ones such as smelter, crime etc.
Blogging as a medium inherently allows one to discuss what interests them personally and not based on any agenda or specific topics.
We find a lot of local blogs to be more “micro-blogs” using it as a conversational tools or diary where the authors are keeping everyone updated as to their specific details or rants.
We have not moved to “macro-blogging” where we discuss topics that may affect us on a larger scale. In addition to this we are still reliant on the major news houses to report our news as blogging has yet to step into that arena.
Not withstanding you can discover blogs not on Mani’s blog roll that address those issues and may have been overlooked such as The Rights Action Group (smelter) and Murder - Trinidad and Tobago (crime).
These two blogs though are basically reposted content or synopsis of major newspaper articles with minimal interjection by the authors on the issues.
The question of “macroblogs” though is why are the people who are involved in those topics not blogging as I am yet to come across a local political figure from any party who blogs.
Could it be the characterization of what the Trini Blogger is based on the blogging story that appeared in the Guardian featuring Mani?
Hopefully soon we will see an emergence of some macro-bloggers that tackle those topical issues with their own opinions and insights, until then Jumbie the floor is open.
What allyuh think?
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I am a blogger from Biche that blogs on technology topics…
I think that the Guardian article on the Trini blogge rbeing preoccupied with crime is partly an opinionated one by the writer. Often, I think reporters put words that have no base/ research. For example, a few months ago there was a big feature article about how people are wearing jerseys with writings/ sayins on them because that is what they’ve resorted to to express their feelings. Oh please! People are wearing the jerseys because it’s in fashion and because they’re affordable at Westport! The same thing goes for categorising bloggers. If the writer had done some more research, he would find more bloggers, and more of what they’re talking about.
Perhaps bloggers writing about their lives is what’s easy for them. Some use it to just relax and express themselves. Perhaps they don’t feel like regurgitating what they read in the traditional media? We’ve got to consider all of these things before casting judgement on content.
I blog on food for many reasons - one of which is that I am interested in food, and representing my experience with Trini and Caribbean food culture. There are only a few of us Caribbean foodbloggers anyway, so I think it has its place.
I know that crime, politics and the smelter are important and are indeed part of our lives, but so is food and technology and carnival and cricket. Those things aren’t going to go away either and cannot be discounted as important for people to chronicle in blogs.
I do agree that there is quite a lot of free commentary in newspapers etc in Trinidad. Maybe that’s it. Afer all our population isn’t that big. Plus, there may be many people who blog who cannot (for employment or other reasons) enter what is a political discussion online.
In my blog: Waiting to Exhale, I tried to show that we cannot wait on others to stand up for us. If we want change, we have to think of the bigger pictures, not only the trivialities.
I may be too serious in my blogs, I need to see the lighter side of things, but at the same time, so many Trinis ONLY see the lighter side.
This particular blog came about because of the disproportionate amount of people I saw writing about carnival. Sigh, it is their right, but to me, carnival is not nearly as important as all the crap taking place. Hope you see my point, its not as if I am out to diss anyone. Lets just agree to see the differences.
There’s a need for good trini blogging.
Don’t worry, this year we’re coming.
So what can we expect and when E??
Later down the road, but something coming and we’ll “try a ting”, I subscribed to the feed and you’ll know when it happens! Now get to bloggin’!