Starting Over

Today marks the blog's fourth anniversary - the first archives are no longer online, but they are still there, somewhere, on a disc. It is also two years and one month since the blog became a daily occurrence, save for the occasional planned or unplanned absence.

There are certain questions that you raise - what actually is the blog, how do I find the time, where do I get the "inspiration" to write something every day. Of these, the second is probably the easiest to answer. I just do. Rarely does it take a huge amount of time. What can is redrafting pieces and sometimes junking those I'm not satisfied with and starting over. I've started this piece more than once. The third is also quite easy. It boils down to being open to any sort of tag or lead, be it from the media (of all sorts), what someone says, what one observes. There is no shortage of "inspiration", so long as one keeps eyes and ears wide open.

The first question is the most difficult. Blogs vary in their style and purpose. Originally, many were in effect diaries. And that was pretty much how this one started out. But it has moved on, a long way from that original concept. What it is not, and has never set out or claimed to be, is a news service. That there may be news is generally the starting-point for something broader. But to give an exact definition is hard.

Much of what appears on the internet as personal contributions has found its voice through not only blogs but also social networks and now also Twitter. Defining any of them is not straightforward. Indeed one of the people behind Twitter told "Wired Magazine" recently that "I don't know" would be one of the ways he would define it. In other words, these vehicles emerge and are shaped by those who make use of them. It is the very looseness of purpose that is appealing and stimulating but also unfocussed and potentially dangerous. And by dangerous, I mean a tendency to vilification and vendetta. Blogs, social networks, Twitter are all means of expression and of self-publishing. They should all be approached with responsibility. Unfortunately, this is not always so. Publish and be damned? No. Publish and damn someone or something has become the principle.

But two words above tend to give a meaning as to what happens on this blog - looseness and the opposite of "unfocussed", i.e. focussed. These may seem contradictory, but there is looseness in the sense that subject matter is broad while focussed within a context, one of Mallorca and Spain. If one trawls through October's entries alone, there were few specific main features about Alcúdia or Pollensa. But as it says on the tin, the blog is not just about Alcúdia or Pollensa; the focus, the angle is wider. And the subject matters are equally wide - from abortion and smoking to football and the Olympics, but all within a Spanish if not a Mallorcan context.

In this respect, the blog is largely a series of observations - of society, politics, people, places and more. And one situates Alcúdia and Pollensa within a broader framework of these disparate elements. It is, for example, impossible to have an appreciation of local politics without some nod in the direction of what went before, no more so than the Franco period, and of the current politics of language.

More than this, however, I have come to realise that the blog is, to a great extent, a reaction against not only the lameness of much writing about Mallorca but also its sheer absence. To explain. There have been two recent stories - the BNP and Stephen Gately. I considered both of them, but apart from the fact that Gately just so happened to die in Mallorca, there was no obvious Mallorcan or Spanish angle. Why do them? In fact, I have a not uninteresting story about the BNP, one that I have outlined to more than one of you in an email, but I couldn't justify it as a blog story.

Yet both these stories have been given a good airing in the English-speaking press, as do, of course, all sorts of stories that have nothing to do with Mallorca or Spain. I don't criticise this as such, but what I do question is an over-abundance of British and international news and comment at the expense of the innumerable stories that exist either on the island or in the country. In this, there is an additional problem, and it is one of credibility. While I will take note of what a Simon Jenkins, a Matthew Parris or even a Richard Littlejohn might have to say about British politics, why should I take any notice of what someone living in Palma or Calvia might have to say? They are not credible witnesses because they are removed. Their contributions are the hard-copy equivalent of a blogger who wants to get something off his or her chest. In their physical, newsprint guise, they fill space to no great effect, other than as testimony to egoism.

It is this further realisation that draws me to conclude that there is little or no future for the hard-copy English press in Mallorca. The essentially regurgitated nature of British/international news and comment can be found on the internet, as can the primary contributions of Jenkins and the rest. The lack of a more local focus may indeed be better served away from the traditional press and tackled via blogs and the like. The newspaper has become simply a means of packaging or as a promotional tool for it in a different form or for advertisers. The real stories are to be found elsewhere.

I shall press on, but may soon be starting over ... watch out.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - P.J. Harvey and Thom Yorke, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99k8w65v3_I. Today's title - and this was?

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