RICK’S BLOG: WE DON’T NEED RUPERT MURDOCH TELLING US WHAT TO DO

BY RICK GRANT rickgrant01@comcast.net Posted Dec. 26, 2006

Recently, Time’s "Person of The Year" cover issue hit the stands featuring a computer monitor with a mirror, proclaiming that you, me, and everyone were the persons of the year. It was brilliant commentary on today’s rise of the individual as the free voice of journalism. Now, everyone is a writer or a videographer. I manage and write a webzine called www.rickatnight.com with a link to this blog. I’m also the Senior Writer for EU Jacksonville. Like millions of other bloggers and journalists, my writings are well published in print and on-line.

When publishing billionaire, Rupert Murdoch nixed the TV interview and book concerning O.J. Simpson’s hypothetical ruminations about murder, it got me to thinking about billionaire publishers/media moguls deciding what stories get published and what is killed. Of course, the O.J. blabber was a terrible idea, which would have caused further pain to the victims’ families, saying how he would have killed Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown–"if he did it." Hell, everyone on earth knows he did it.

The point is: However ill-conceived this project was, it could have been accomplished without Murdoch’s blessing. It may very well get into cyberspace if the writer can free herself from Murdoch’s contractual grip. It will probably get into cyberspace anyway. Everything salacious eventually pops-up on-line.

Today, if you blog or manage your own website, you are officially published. We don’t need some fat cat billionaire telling us what to do. The Internet is truly free speech in it’s most free flowing form. Justifiably, the better writers get more recognition than the hacks, but the editors at Time were absolutely right. It’s the era of the individual, plugged in to the vast matrix of the Internet. It’s a living, breathing thing, with bits of information pulsing through its arteries at light speed, and into its collective brain like billions of charged particles from the sun bombarding the earth.

Anchor person, Daryn Kagan left CNN. She thought to herself, "I don’t need a corporate suits telling me what stories to produce." So she split and started her own webcasting site, DarynKagan.com where she produces daily high quality human interest webcasts. In two weeks on-line, she started to sell advertising to make the site profitable. Go girl!

There are many other notable examples of people grabbing their piece of the World Wide Web’s pie .Our voices are saying to Murdoch and other bloated billionaire publishers, "You can take your publishing empires and shove it up your fat asses." We don’t need you to tell us what to publish. Let the on-line readers decide who gets rich and who doesn’t. In fact, we don’t need your newspapers or tabloid magazines. Just log-on and find out what you want to read or write your own commentary. It’s you, me, and everyone, baby. We matter. We are the people of the year!