whapakk.

The following words are coming from someone who just happened to be thrust into the limelight for something he does everyday: chronicle what happens to him on a regular basis. Sounds mundane, yes? It is.

I have been blogging for years now and yesterday was the first time I got so much exposure on mainstream networks (TV and radio) and multiple websites and blogs. My blog traffic spiked too much that it crashed sometime last night and I had to call my hosting provider to bump up my bandwidth as soon as possible. It was just really crazy.

Me with Zyann Ambrosio and her cameraman, from ABS-CBN.

But what does it mean to me? Above all else, I still think that I’m just a blogger who happened to be there at the right place, at the right time. That’s plainly it. But I appreciate all the feedback and thank you messages I received for delivering the news so soon after the incident. Thank you to everyone, really.

This is probably the best time for me to write about blogging as citizen journalism. I mean, I never thought of myself as a citizen journalist before, at least not by this much, not until I was called one by many of the people who have read my blog yesterday, mostly for the first time. Then I realized that hey, wait a second, if blogging means people posting events that happen to them daily, does that not qualify as citizen journalism already? They are talking about their own sentiments about things around them, anyway, so at the very least, these are the voices (alright, hands) of people lending their opinion to others, right?

It does not have to be news. It does not have to be sensational. It does not have to be about cars exploding. Whatever you say, it’s an experience shared, and it’s part of the collective sentiment of this nation.

I am representing a blog advertising network, Nuffnang Philippines, and everyday I am exposed to the local blogging scene and to people wanting to make money out of their blogs. This is not a bad thing. It is, in more ways than one, a good thing because people are rewarded in some way for writing about their personal experiences. But there, on the last six words of the previous sentence, lies the catch: they really have to write about what they go through daily. If it was an advertising-only blog, it wouldn’t be a personal journal anymore, right?

It had to be an alternate take on the Serendra incident by Peter Imbong to push me to write about this. He quotes:

“According to Sheila Coronel, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism founder, there is great potential for alternative or small media (like citizen journalism) to challenge those which are corporate controlled, like popular radio and TV stations. She sees these channels are much more democratic than those of corporate media because information is disseminated without the benefit from media gatekeepers (editors, station managers, etc.) and free from the pressure of media owners and the government. In addition, there is also the important role that alternative media plays in shaping public opinion.”

- peterimbong.com

It’s true. And it bears pressure on us bloggers to write responsibly.

The bottomline here is that we bloggers are journalists, too, in our own ways, in our own writing styles, in our own points of view. I’ve proven to myself yesterday, in my first real encounter with media people from ABS-CBN, GMA, Inquirer, and even the Associated Press and Reuters, that their industry pays much respect to the news they carry, and much respect too to the sources of their information.

This is a call for other bloggers to do the same: respect your audience, your sources, and your news. We carry much power in this new age of user-generated content and quick information-sharing, and they say that with that comes great responsibility, right?