Cat Food? Nah, I prefer bacon..

Jim Lundgren @TVC and Nick Stewart have good summeries of the stupidity of Sunday's Doonsbury strip atacking bloggers as "angry, semi-employed losers who are too untalented or too lazy to get real jobs in journalism" who eat cat food.

What Gary Treudeu doesn't seem to grasp is that most bloggers don't want to be journalists, any more than the people who call into radio shows or write letters to the editior do. They just want to write - and not just about politics, but also about their lives, hobbies, pets, and a thousand other things.

Part of the beauty of blogging is that most bloggers have day jobs (heck, with all the overtime I put in, I practically have two). That means that bloggers often have a different perspective on things, a perspective influenced by having different jobs, family lives, and obligations than the typical journalist. Some of the best bloggers are people with specialized knowledge, like lawyers or professors. Some, like me, are just tech support grunts with something to say.

I've never wanted to be a journalist (a profession which I would guess has a much greater chance of having to eat catfood than my current one). But I've always had strong opinions, and blogging gives me a way to share them with anyone who wants to listen. It also gives me an outlet to vent about my day and communicate with friends and coworkers. Writing here gives me a way to vent as well as helps me take the ideas in my head and formulate them into something a little clearer. I would blog even if nobody read it - which more often then not is the case.