Some readers drew my attention and urged a response to a lovely little rant over at Heather Ford’s blog, Hblog.org, regarding the SA Blog Awards and 2oceansvibe’s winning of six categories.

Hblog.org

Apart from being one of the judges in this year’s awards, Heather bills herself in her About section as “a social entrepreneur who is passionate about public speaking, networking, creativity and the Internet, and is happiest when creating events, teaching, writing and crafting.”

She had a few comments.

If I may:

“I’m still trying to work it out, but perhaps its as obvious as the number of readers of newspapers with headlines about young women having sex with aliens. I think it’s an indictment on SA blogging when 2oceansvibe wins 6 categories, including ‘Best South African’ blog in this year’s SA Blog Awards. I mean, I have nothing against the blog (I realise that there is a pretty large audience for tits, ass, cars, rugby and surfing) but the fact that this is the blog that we hold up to the world as our national pride and joy makes me want to hurl . “

“If the blog awards brand doesn’t have any meaning, any vision, any unique take on the world of blogging, then I guess it will be just another popularity contest – which is fine – but just not what I hoped for SA.”

[more here]

Nice one, Heather. Fair enough. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

All I can say is that I’m sorry you found it all such a let down and, in particular, that you were compelled to “hurl.” That was certainly not my intention when writing the five to ten daily articles for the last few years, which, evidently, lead to this point. I think I was just trying to give the readers who chose to come to the site, what they wanted.

Bizarre as it may seem, upbeat positive writing about “tits, ass, cars, rugby and surfing” (lest we forget fashion, TV, cinema, music, food, politics, travel, technology, business, boats, leisure, art, money, competitions, Mavis and The TBG (see left hand menu options)) do seem to be a desirable commodity. Which is weird, I guess.

Maybe I should be covering more about Zuma; you know, to ADD to the rest of our national “traditional media” headlines. Or perhaps Rupert Murdoch was on the right track when he said, “I believe too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers. Too often, the question we ask is “Do we have the story? rather than “Does anyone want the story?”

Do YOU have any thoughts on this? Do let us know by leaving a comment below.

(Read more of Heather’s article here (which also has a comments section). Or you can check out the front page of her blog here).