Last week CMAJ posted its first blog (www.cmaj.ca/misc/drblog1.shtml). James Maskalyk (a.k.a. Dr. Blog), a former editorial fellow at CMAJ, is its author and the engineer of this experiment at the journal. Working with Médecins Sans frontières (MSF), he provides readers with an insightful gaze at the health care system in Bolivia, and specifically their efforts to prevent and treat endemic Chagas' disease. Maskalyk will soon travel to Africa to work in MSF-sponsored HIV treatment programs.
A blog (short for Web log) is a sort of diary, a regularly updated journal on the Web. Blogs allow people to publish their writings electronically without the impediments of traditional print. In a blog, a person can instantaneously muse about anything from medicine to politics to Brad and Jennifer. Their content and quality varies as widely as the topics; many are self-indulgent, but a great number are genuine attempts to inform. The earliest and most vivid accounts of last December's tsunami victims were found in blogs (www.phukettsunami.blogspot.com). Universities are using blogs to facilitate communication between students and faculty members. Politically oriented blogs figured prominently in the resignation of CNN's news executive over comments about journalists in Iraq, as well as the retraction by CBS's Dan Rather of a story about George W. Bush's military service record.
Is blogging a legitimate form of journalism? Publishing online does not make one a journalist; interviews, fact-checking, editing and professional ethics are tenets of the journalistic process that are largely absent in blogging. But proponents argue that bloggers provide a valuable perspective, unfettered by the structural biases of the increasingly concentrated media establishment. Without this new communications medium, the voice of the average blogger would not be heard.
Have blogs any role at a medical journal? We aim to find out if they are sustainable. In this, our first exploration, we have not tried to push the boundaries very hard: Maskalyk is active in global health medicine and armed with deft prose. But we recognize the potential to host additional blogs, open to the international community, that would allow free discourse on a wide range of themes such as primary care, rural medicine and medical education, to name a few. We welcome ideas from motivated readers who are interested in launching blogs on CMAJ's Web site.
In the spirit of blogging, we hope to furnish a medium that encourages the exchange of information and provides insights that are free from the pressures of academic advancement, harsh peer reviewers and tyrannical editors.
Footnotes
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Competing interests: None declared.