By AMARANTE CORDOVA
Special to The Tribune
BROWNSVILLE, Texas - For area Bloggers who love to frame their words carelessly and enjoy offering a sort of jaded outlook on local life, the overall attraction seems to be typing something today and waiting on tomorrow to type something more again. Forget depth; the style does not require it in the least. It's better to throw something out - anything! - and hope it draws notice in the way of reader comments. Yes, it's a cheap way of reporting news & information, but, then, it rarely is news, and whether it's needed info is up for discussion.
It is both entertaining and meaningless.
Choose your poison. There are enough Blogs to feed a moving school of fish, or a passing parade of morons. From the ridiculous in MyHarlingenNews.com to the sublime in BrownsvilleLiteraryReview.blogspot.com. In the same jagged broadband are the dense BrownsvilleVoice.blogspot.com and the dogged, ever-striving, but never arriving MyLeaderNews.com, which, unlike all the others, tries to stay true to the tenets of Journalism.
In the final analysis, these Blogs fail not only their readers, but their communities. MyHarlingenNews wants to be the breathless Town Crier bellowing news nuggets and rumor down on the streetcorner. BrownsvilleLiteraryReview is caught in a trap of not knowing whether to be credible or exist as just another childish porno site. BrownsvilleVoice, over-written by a wordy, disbarred lawyer, is in dire need of an editor, someone with a grasp of grammar and sentence structure. MyLeaderNews could use a little more fire, and it also could stand a good dose of through-and-through thinking when formulating its editorials. A generous helping of personal opinion routinely finds its way into its hard-news stories, and, like MyHarlingenNews, its editor seemingly is of the opinion that reader comments justifies a Blog's existence, a philosophy at odds with the very idea of being taken seriously.
So, what does it mean for the reader?
The RGVofTexas counts on a very passive population when it comes to letters. The Arts are misunderstood and comment related to anything in that vein rarely elevates the conversation. Blogs? RGVofTexas readers allot no standard, want no measurement and can take them or leave them.
These are, however, people at the keyboard. Their communities - Brownsville and Harlingen - suffer great social ills. One would think that at least one Blogger would break away and attempt a Blog true to the truth, to fairness, to news, to ethics. Not one chases that bent, however. Instead, what readers get is an amalgam of juvenile Internet playgrounds that come dressed in superfluous lingo, gutter pornography, God-awful grammar and mind-numbing ennui; that is, incredibly boring material.
The winners?
That's easy: under-performing politicians, misbehaving public servants, vicious trends that go ignored and that ever-present noun outsiders forever assign to those living here: malaise.
The day is coming when the region will get the Blog it deserves. Until then, it must suffer the words of Less-Than-Zero Bloggers who would rather confuse and entertain than serve a public quite ready for something better.
Perhaps in 2011, eh, Boys?...
- 30 -
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Writer Amarante Cordova formerly appeared in print as a character in the John Nichols novel, "The Milagro Beanfield War." He currently resides in the Brownsville suburb of Olmito with his longtime girlfriend, Ruby Archuleta. This is Amarante's first report for The Tribune...]
5 comments:
10 Careers With High Rates of Depression -
#1Artists, entertainers,writers
These jobs can bring irregular paychecks, uncertain hours, and isolation.
Creative people may also have higher rates of mood disorders; about 9% reported an episode of major depression in the previous year.
In men, it’s the job category most likely to be associated with an episode of major depression (nearly 7% in full-time workers).
“One thing I see a lot in entertainers and artists is bipolar illness,” says Legge. “There could be undiagnosed or untreated mood disorders in people who are artistic…. Depression is not uncommon to those who are drawn to work in the arts, and then the lifestyle contributes to it.”
-from Health.com
Easy... on the locals, Armante is pretty hard on it's criticism.
Olmito, is more like an ejido, not much to look at, or visit.
I have visited New York and it is a nice place to visit. But living in New York city is expensive.
Why would anyone live their, for me it is too crowded.
With $14.000.00 I could have me a good time in Las Vegas.
ANONYNOUSES:...Depression is relative. Some writers suffer from it, but, as with all sectors of working society, not all. Bartenders in the Valley are said to be susceptible to wild bouts of depression, as are our veterans and our policemen and our drug dealers. Alas, there are not many writers in the RGVofTexas, so you don't see much of that in the region. 2.) Amarante Cordova is not a mean writer. He paints to relax, mostly frontal nudes of his girlfriend, Ruby. 3.) New York is expensive. A bottle of Corona Extra will cost you $12 in most restaurants. It's foreign beer, see, not domestic... - Editor
Wow, Alcatraz you are a worldy man as someone characterize you before. $12.00 a beer is kind of pricey. I think I will follow, Jr. Bonner's cheap Lone Star beer.
Okay, you may call me cheepo, but times are hard here in the Valley.
I was at Wild Bills Honky Tonk, bought a bucket of beer, for a total of $22.50.
Six beers in one bucket, sorry, New York, I will remain a Texan.
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