Why I created a Blog

Today I was sitting in a class and my teacher asked anyone who had a blog to raise their hand. Only one person raised her hand. I thought that was odd considering I know quite a few people who have blogs, maybe they just didn't want to admit it and then have to explain their blog to the teacher, or even worse have him go looking to read their blogs. In our class discussion my teacher also mentioned that a solider in Iraq created a blog to tell his family everything that was going on since it was easier than emailing everyone. I have family in Ireland who I can't call because I lack an international phone plan. This leaves email as really my only route of communication. I thought a blog might be a good alternative to the occasional email. Thats my personal motivation. A discussion of the power of bloggers also piqued my interest. We discussed how bloggers are affecting traditional journalism. There were the bloggers that realized the story Dan Rather presented at CBS news about President Bush not completing his service in the National guard was wrong. The story was based on some documents from a superior officer saying the service had not been completed. Bloggers showed thorough the type used in the documents did not exist at they time they were supposedly written and thus the documents could not be authentic. As a result of this CBS and Dan Rather had to apologize to the public and later Dan Rather resigned from CBS news. This showed that bloggers do have power. I do have a third motivation for my desire for a blog. I'm about to graduate with a degree in journalism, and I thought it might be helpful to know my way around a blog and possibly use it as a place to post clips that I can show to employers when applying for jobs. So there it is, my motivation for joining the blogging crowd.