The Philippines According to Blogs

Blogging is slowly becoming a popular alternative to mainstream media. Even mainstream media has already recognized blogging as a tool for gathering news while others even use blog entries to quote interviews in their news articles. The social phenomenon that is blogging has already made a significant change on how information is disseminated thru the internet.

Before we begin to examine the usual signs how blogging has crept into the arena of mainstream media, we need to understand what blogging is and how it came about.

A blog is a condensed term for weblog, commonly used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. Blogs range from the personal, technical, informational to the political, and can focus on one specific subject matter or a whole range of subjects.
Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as “web design”, “politics”, “sports”, or “mobile technology”. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all nature of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting someone’s daily life and thoughts which most of them started off first.
Blogs have been around almost as internet was introduced in the Philippines in the early parts of 1995. During those times, the early bloggers didn’t have a name for what they were doing besides calling it a personal website or an online journal.

Back then, if you want to have your own blog, you’d have to learn the basics of HTML and a little bit of the technical aspects like FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Besides that, when one has to publish or update their site, it was done manually – editing the pages, adding links and pictures and then uploading the affected files or webpages. It was a tedious and time-consuming effort, added to that the scarcity of internet connectivity, updating a website or blog takes a great deal of effort and patience. Thus, the frequency of updates was scarce and nowhere near with what we enjoy today. Now, there are blogging tools and services which allow almost anyone who has internet connection to create their own blog in a matter of minutes.

Blogging became so phenomenal because of its viral effect – linking other related blogs, pointing to online sources and digging deep into the issue with a personal touch. It has democratized people thru the internet and allowed regular folks to express their own thoughts and opinions without censor or editorial filters which all professional journalists have go to thru before getting published. In a way, blogging is instant news delivered with a touch of personal opinion.

Blogs will not depose mainstream media, rather it will add to it. News media, despite it’s inherent credibility is still more often than not, bland and too objective. What blogs offer is a taste of personalized news coupled with reader interaction – something which traditional media lack.

In the Philippines, blogging has just begun, yet we now have several prominent people who use blogging as a tool to reach their audience and to freely express themselves.

Comm. Dondi Mapa of the CICT could probably be the first high-ranking government official to put up a public blog (http://1mjobs.blogspot.com). His blog aims to reach the relevant sectors and the general public to the importance of CICT in in generating jobs. The blog allows direct interaction with the readers and Comm. Mapa likewise gets suggestions and comments direct from his readers and the general public.

There is also a blog entitled “Philippine Debt Management Issues” (http://lowerphildebt.blogspot.com) which was published by former Philippine Treasurer, Nina Lasala. Her blog was meant to server as an open forum for investors, fellow finance officers, and other interested parties to discuss the state of Philippine Debt Management.

One of the most popular Filipino blogs today is HouseonaHill.net (www.houseonahill.net) of Connie Veneracion, a retired lawyer now currently staying at home and working full time with her blogs. Her blog topics spread from photography to politics. She also runs a cooking blog at PinoyCook.net which has been popular with a lot of OFWs around the world.

Dean Francis Alfar, a seven time Carlos Palanca Awardee, also runs his own personal and literary blog called “Notes from the Peranut Gallery” (deanalfar.blogspot.com). Jim Paredes of the Apo Hiking Society has been blogging since November 2003. His blog is entitled “Writing on Air” (http://haringliwanag.pansitan.net/).

Former Inquirer columnist Dean Jorge Bacobo was the first Filipino journalist who started to blog (deanjorgebocobo.blogspot.com) though he has not been publishing anything on his blog for a while now. Joey Ararilla (http://babelmachine.blogspot.com/) of Inq7.net now holds that spot. Manuel L. Quezon III, also a columnist of Inquirer and curator of the Ayala Museum, also has a blog at www.quezon.ph/blog as well as technology columnist Chin Wong (hwww.info.com.ph/~chinwong/) of the Manila Standard (www.manilastandardonline.com).

Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) has also recently put up their very own blog at www.pcij.com/blog. For some months now, Inq7.net (www.inq7.net) has been maintaining a blog-hybrid on their news website, entitled “Talking Points”. They also ran a section featuring interviews with regular bloggers, YOU Blog Addict (http://you.inq7.net/gear/index.htm), and another one for HackenSlash (www.hackenslash.net/gameblog/), the game blog. Likewise, Manila Bulletin Online (www.mb.com.ph) also created a feature in their Technology section specifically for blogging and Filipino bloggers called “Blog-O-Rama”.

The blog portal “The Philippines According to Blogs” (www.pinoyblog.com) is a collaborative blog that aims to serve as a starting point for any Filipino blogger and even regular blog readers to explore the Philippine blogging scene. The PinoyBlog portal enables regular blog members to re-publish a short summary of their entries with links pointing back to their own blog site. Likewise, casual readers will only need to browse to one site, read the summaries and click on the entries which interest them. This blog aggregation service is what converges the bloggers and their readers in the portal which in turn creates the blog community.

Last May 7, 2005, the 1st Philippine Blog Summit (www.iblogph.org) was held at the NISMED Center of UP Diliman. Over 150 bloggers and blog enthusiasts attended the summit which was covered by news media GMA 7 and ABC 5. This event initiated the evangelization of blogging in all sectors of society. Prominent speakers and presentors at the summit included Comm. Dondi Mapa, Dean Alfar, the delegates from Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).

Though blogging is still in it’s infancy in the Philippines, we may someday find more and more people, especially those from the government sector, to use weblogs as a tool to reach their constituents. Presidential candidates in the recent US elections have their own blogs that acts as a marketing tool and a portal to for their constituents during the election period. Who knows, maybe some time in the near future, the President of the Philippines will also have a blog of her own?