When they talk about the comparison between blogging and press journalism, they never mention the two strongest differences for me. The first is trivial: it’s word length. You can write as little or as much as it takes on the Web. On paper, you have to trim your ideas to fit the pattern of the page: pad out or reign in.
The second is the permanence of print, and the horrible finality of printing. I get a small frisson when I hit “:wq” on this entry, but it’s a fraction of the sickening dread I get when I realise that what I’ve written is is now frozen in time, and printed on thousands and thousands of pieces of paper that can never be backspaced over, can never be undone. Some journalists talk about the pride they gain from seeing their words in print. I can’t look at them. I can’t stand it. It’s all too definite, all too concrete. Words aren’t like that. They’re too soft. In event of disaster, they should be able to run home and hide under your skirttails.
And every word, when once it is written, is bandied about, alike among those who understand and those who have no interest in it, and it knows not to whom to speak or not to speak; when ill-treated or unjustly reviled it always needs its father to help it; for it has no power to protect or help itself.
And they’re pretty bad at protecting their parents too: here’s a piece written by Isioma Daniel, the woman who knocked out a lighthearted column on how funny the Nigerian Miss World was.
I remember feeling uneasy after completing the piece. It was breezy and sarcastic. My recent time in Britain, studying journalism at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, had made me irreverent – there are no sacred cows in the UK. The tabloids have finished them off. I printed a copy and handed it to my editor. “Make sure you read it,” I said. A few minutes later I reminded him. “I have sent the article to your computer, have you read it?” He read a few lines. “It’s fine,” he said.
Two hundred or more dead later, she’s got a fatwa on her head, and is in exile in the US.