Don't cry for me?

I have just read today what for me seems to be the perfect justification for a blog. One of the regular contributors to the local press, Ezra Alleyne, appears to be writing his last opinion column for The Nation (see link). He writes:

"THIS COLUMN'S NECK is under a sword, and by the time you reach my final full stop, the blade will have fallen; and for one grisly moment, the pen will not be mightier than the sword. Editorial changes have decreed the execution of this column, and I sincerely regret that the honour of sharing your Fridays will no longer be mine. Future "issues" already conceived will struggle for airspace and may die, while "ideas" waiting to be expressed will be stillborn, as the sword of Damocles separates the nucleus of the word from seminal contact with the written page."

He then writes what for me is one of the few forthright critiques of the local press in the local press that I have read since landing in Bim, even though he does this in defense of partisan political columnists:

"The journalist is the umpire, or ought to be, moderating the issues in a fair and unbiased manner, and calling it as he sees it....But the local Press fails miserably! It swallows and regurgitates the news but avoids digestion and analysis like the plague....Where is the analysis that allows the man and woman in the street, to judge whether there might be a viable alternative approach to managing this problem [of higher diesel prices]..."

Many bloggers have been saying the same for months, and nothing much has changed. Radio call-ins have danced around the subject, and seemed to missed the boat that the problem is within, not without.

Most witheringly, Mr. Alleyne writes, in the context of dismissals by the new government of employees from a public agency:

"Almost three months later, no section of our "wet macaroni" Press has thought 'to analyse' and 'watchdog' the exercise of such executive "power" in the face [of this action]".

As they say in the US, "Well, hello!" What do you expect?

Mr. Alleyne, my suggestion to you, is to forget the pen and pick up the computer keyboard. Take control of your destiny. I know the comfort of holding my favourite fountain pen and seeing the words flow onto the paper, letter by letter, brilliant idea following brilliant idea. I also know the annoyance of seeing those hard-crafted words ditched by "an editor" and lounging in a waste paper basket.

By the end of today I expect to hear that you will have started a blog. You could even call it "Issues and Ideas", which has little or no risk of being called copyright infringment. Start to post your Friday musings online today, and even post them more frequently. Let your partisan juices flow all over the Internet. Monitor your readership and interact with them and their comments, if you wish, in a way that is more direct than through the letters column of the newspapers. You will be the originator, moderator, editor, commentator, as your mood suits. You could even be more partisan depending on your true political leanings. I, for one, look forward to adding this new blog to my blogroll.

But, if you feel that the only medium for floating those opinions that you hold so dear and want to share is through that pen and on the sheets produced by processing wood pulp or reprocessed sheets, then use some of those sheets to dry your tears.

The "honour of sharing your Fridays" can continue. Future "issues" already conceived need not "struggle for airspace" or "die". "Ideas" waiting to be expressed need not be stillborn. The "sword of Damocles" need not fall on your neck. You will, however, have to give up "seminal contact with the written page". Hooo. It's chilly out there. But can the wind that blows into the face of a blogger be colder than that which savagely, and perhaps arbitrarily, cuts down a writer whose works are no longer sought? Take courage, Ezra.