Mean Writers Suck

A while back a got a message from a reader informing me that I'm not a journalist. I'm sure many bloggers get messages like this since some journalists feel threatened by internet writing. Some say blogs and content sites are taking away their jobs. Others say the internet is lowering journalistic standards.

Now, don't think I have a vendetta against journalists. I went to J-school (what journalists call journalism school), actually. I was my college's newspaper editor, as well as the editor of a college club's newspaper. Just because I blog or write for the internet

doesn't make me a bumpkin. Just because another writer didn't go to journalism school doesn't make him or her a worse writer than someone who did, either.

It's all about choices.

I choose to write primarily for internet mediums because they pay more quickly than other publications. Someone else may go with writing for magazines because a minority of them pay $1 per word. To each his own.

We writers need to stop judging each other based on silly preconceptions. If a writer has a strong voice and her writing is entertaining or informative, that's all that really matters. How they make their money or where they went to school is their own business.