A largely biased ode to blogging by a temporarily disabled person

Some of you know that last week, I fell in the hall of the journalism building and fractured my kneecap. Three days later I had surgery but I'm still recovering and still can't walk properly on my right leg. Most of my days are spent on the couch and trying to bear weight on my right leg while taking short walks.

So when it comes to my favorite type of journalism right now, online certainly takes the cake. With the exclusion of programs like CNN, broadcast journalism comes on at prescribed times- during the evening, when my leg starts to sting and a mild fever sets in. Newspapers are cumbersome to deal with when most of my attention is on propping up my leg. The nice thing about computers and the Internet at my parents' house, however, is that we have both wireless and a nice computer stand for the laptop, which I am utilizing right now. :)

Speaking of blogs, I think a distinction must be drawn between those, which strive to be journalistic (and therefore must be held to appropriate standards of neutrality,) and those, which are personal in nature. I know that when most people in my parents' generation think of personal blogs, they're trained to believe that the vast majority of them are written by "tweens" whose main concern is to complain about social cliques and divulge too much personal information on a public forum. However, personal blogs can be much bigger than that.

I'm a very shy person; my strength lies in my writing and I've met several friends through my blog. When I broke my knee last week, the easiest way to get the word out to my friends was to make a voice post to my Livejournal. I didn't even need a computer or Internet connection in that instance. But it was important to me to let my friends know.

On the same tack, in reading this week's class lecture, I was happy to learn about the Webbog awards; most of this year's winners seem to be personal blogs from across the world. Though highly subjective, I believe this medium is an important one. As a 24-year-old female whose spent most of her life in Maryland, it's beneficial to learn about other life experiences.