Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Define yourself


Journalists have been described as various things. Some believe that they are ethnographic researchers, meaning they observe everyday ordinary people and extract stories from just immersing themselves into the situations surrounding them. Others call them watchdogs, people who are always on the look out for wrong doing so that they can report fraudulent politicians, corporate world leaders and celebrities.
I believe journalists are intellectual researchers, informers, courageous communicators and participants in everyday life situations. They report news through different media: radio, newspapers, television, blogs, books and many more avenues to the masses. They keep us updated and informed which helps a lot of us to make well informed decisions. Journalists are creative in every sense of the word; they can tell timeless stories, like human interest stories on past heroes and make the stories applicable in our current lives. Journalists bring the stories they report on to life, one gets the feeling of the immediacy of a hard news story. They are entertaining and most of all they seek and bring about change.
However one cannot assume that all journalists are good Samaritans across the world. There are some journalists who just run with stories to make money. Others do not care how unethical it is to hurt people in order to get what they want, other journalists lie about stories or contacts and still get away with it. Some journalists lack passion and a drive for the good of the people. Others use their writing abilities and journalistic freedom to attack people on a personal level and the list goes on. The fact of the matter is journalism like any other career has its positive and negative connotations. The question is what do we do as journalists of tomorrow to avoid the clichés and inhumanity while striving for objectivity and all rounded reporting?
I aspire to be a tenacious reporter, who will go further than the average man. I want to write stories not for the sake of putting a good English breakfast on my table every morning, but to change people’s ways of thinking, to question conventions and to bring about a sense of humanity and goodness. Battle of the sexez is platform for ideas to be communicated, for opinions to form and debates to take place about the issue of gender. A lot of the time people believe that they can define who or what the next person is by just pure artificial judgement. This blog will give homosexuals, transgender, hermaphrodites, heterosexuals and many more people all across the world to discuss their experiences, hardships and how they have been categorised as something that they are not in society. This is a chance to do define yourself, go for it!

Monday, September 28, 2009

THE NEXT BIG THING

SA crash out of Champions Trophy, Zuma lashes Mbeki on Aids, Michael Jackson single to be released, OOPS Britney Spears Does it AGAIN!- this is the news that we feed off on a daily basis. We converse, discuss and debate matters such as this. We follow celebrities, disasters and many more aspects which are happening world wide all around us. Who can we thank for this? The answer my friends, is not blowing in the wind, it is the Journalists across the world that we have to thank.Journalists perform a very important task in providing a basis for us to make in formed decisions and opinions about what is going on in the news of the World we live in. By researching and writing about matters, we the readers are told a story of what is happening around the world, and from that we get to form our own ideas and opinions. In other words, what journalists write is not always what we have to think.

Working in an office, behind a desk everyday for the rest of my life seems like a nightmare to me, which is why journalism inspires me so much. Being able to have a career which encourages me to go out there, to be on the streets and work with people gets my blood pumping. I’m loud, I’m ‘out there’, I’m a sociable and confident person that find people fascinating, so why not make a career out of it? Being a journalist gives me the freedom of making something out of my extremely opinionated personality. I have a ‘no-holds-bar’ when it comes to my opinions and I strongly feel that people will enjoy reading what I have to say because of that.

Fashion- something that makes my toes curl and holds my attention. My passion for fashion along with Journalism is what I see myself doing for the rest of my life. Fashion Journalism- yes, I have heard it a million times before, “everyone wants to be in Fashion.” Being such a stubborn opinionated person, I refuse to believe that I will be just like everyone else. I am going to find a new, fresh take on the industry and I am going to be the next “big thing”
I see myself in all major ‘fashion cities’, looking out for new trends, taking photographs for magazines, interviewing Vera Wang, Ralph Lauren and many more world famous designers, I see my name written in magazines such as Elle, Cosmopolitan and Vogue. I see myself as the next big thing.