Before this post, my blog was just the place where I'd (ineptly) keep readers up to date with the latest articles I had written for various publications on a number of different topics.
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One of my specialisms, and my passions, is socially conscious journalism. The industry has had a bad press and the reputations of journalists are lower in the eyes of the public than they have ever been before.
There's been a lot of mistakes, and a lot of corruption. But this doesn't take away what journalism is at its core.
I've wanted to be a journalist ever since I sat determinedly next to my mum in the car on the way to a football match in Ipswich when I was 13 trying to figure out what to do with my life. After all, time was slipping away from me.
At the time, I knew journalism involved writing, a lot of writing, and that's what I loved to do. But as I grew older, working at unpaid placement after unpaid placement, I realised there was a lot more to the industry than just writing well.
Journalism, at its core, is one of the most important public services of them all. Holding authorities to account, to make sure they serve the public well, and to keep everyone informed with the latest news is such a thrill. Anyone who badmouths the press, sometimes with very good reason, will undoubtedly still be reading the papers or watching the news.
As Stan Lee once said, with great power comes great responsibility. In the last few years, my favourite articles have been the ones that have helped under-represented groups of people to reach a wider audience or that highlighted an under-reported issue. Societal and socially conscious journalism, at its strongest, is incredibly moving and can do a lot of good.
Now my weekends have been freed up from the heavy postgraduate workload, I want to provide a space for my humanitarian articles, thoughts on human-centred issues in the national press and links to any socially conscious articles I have recently read and admired.
My job at the wonderful Ham and High fills up most of my time so many of the articles posted here may be ones I have written for the paper. But whenever I get a moment, I will endeavour to update the blog with original thoughts just for the blog.
So flick through, have a read and I hope some of these articles and thoughts spark your interest.
Any comments or suggestions for articles are welcomed with open arms. If you want to write a guest post for the blog, email imogengblake@gmail.com.
