As I write this, there are others who type and publish their own commentaries online. Every other second or so a new entry shoots across cyberspace and you could only guess as to how much information becomes available to the public with just one click of a button. We could not reckon the exact figures or value of sources, or is it that we do not bother reckoning at all?

Sometimes it just gets so comfortable living life in the fast lane. We watch the most jocular YouTube videos, read and get absorbed by the latest entries even those from the likes of bryanboy and delfindjmontano, hack into the lives of the most desirable as well as the most notorious people behind those Friendster profiles, all in one sitting. And after all the blablahs and the boohoos, we only unplug ourselves from the World Wide Web, and that’s just about it.

A few months ago, I finally gave in to my sister’s incessant demand that I join her in her most recent obsession, though she prefers to call it an "investment." I’ve decided to join the bandwagon by signing up for an account in Multiply. With a quite favorable broadband internet access and a cup of coffee by my side, voila! I have yet again created another personal place in cyberspace, another means to propagate my sporadic drama via the technology of internet. WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) web authoring programs can really go a long way, especially if you’re the type who doesn’t have time to read HTML for Dummies.

The introduction of WYSIWYG has allowed people to practically transcend the margins of time and space. People can now send their messages across the globe via World Wide Web. Uploading content on the internet has been made thoroughly simple by this technology. Even my 54 year old mother has a Friendster, a Multiply and a Blogger account which she regularly updates and checks 24/7, for crying out loud. Quoting from Danilo Arao, a professor from the College of Mass Communications in UP Diliman who teaches Online Journalism, this situation entails that anybody can now upload Internet content which can contain erroneous and misleading data. What is more, WYSIWYG also gave rise to the copious number of websites on the Internet. The sheer quantity of these alone makes it harder to filter content that has been uploaded online.

Because WYSIWYG has allowed anyone to publish content online even in the absence of a formal background on HTML hand coding, it has given birth to “citizen journalism.” Ordinary citizens can now function as journalists by conveying their thoughts on certain matters and concerns through their own places in cyberspace, particularly in their blogs. It is in this light that we sometimes equate journalists with bloggers as well as online journalism with blogging.

Then again, if the bloggers we pertain to here are among the likes of Bryanboy, this is where associating journalists with bloggers becomes problematic and rather tricky. Not only that his outputs are nonsensical or lacking of significance and purpose, it should also be kept in mind that journalism is a professional practice and should therefore provide valuable information necessary to keep the public aware, allowing for an appropriate style of writing that would cater to a broad audience. On the contrary, what Bryanboy considers as a noteworthy “current affair” is Eva Mendes posing on the cover of Io Magazine, stressing that she had just gone out of rehab. He also writes in a colloquial manner akin to texting while using idiomatic expressions unique to the gay language. Though his blog invariably generates a lot of traffic, he may have to do harder to become appreciated in the field of journalism, which I doubt he ever minds at all.

Once upon a time, practicing journalism only implied writing for newspapers and other printed materials in order to communicate to a broad audience. Now, journalistic outputs have been amplified into cyber world through the technology of Internet. Along with this development came a world dominated by Bryanboy and journalists alike, and we as readers, are only left with the whole cyberspace to explore but only two options to choose from.