A Genealogist's Dream

When I was younger I dabbled in genealogy. I traced my family back to Prince Edward Island, Canada where I became lost in the rural, undocumented morass of the early nineteenth century. Since then my mother has taken up the challenge and met with great success. I firmly believe that given a few more months I will be able to trace my lineage back to Jesus.

If you go back through the family tree far enough all you generally encounter is a name, a couple of dates, and maybe a spouse; not a lot of information on the person that you are looking at. All of this makes me wonder what future generations of genealogists are going to see of us.

Today our lives are so thoroughly documented and recorded, a plethora of information for my great great great grandson. (If you’re reading this, nice to meet you). It wouldn’t take a skilled researcher hardly any effort at all to assemble a detailed biography of any one of us. What a great opportunity for future generations to see exactly where they came from. Like all genealogists however, they'll blow right past us and wallow in the masochistic muck of the nineteenth century with great delight. Lot’s of luck!

Blogging Ethics

A man sits in his courtyard, his back turned on the street.

We interviewed Nuri al-Maliki last night in the Iraqi Prime Minister's first interview since President Bush’s press conference of the progress in Iraq. I’m struggling with the ethics of documenting my personal observations. While I was part of the interview team my responsibilities were not those of news gathering, hence I feel as if I would be under-cutting the media organization that I work for by taking advantage of it’s exclusive opportunity to publish my own, independent thoughts.

I have a rule when it comes to ethics; if it feels wrong it is. I don’t know enough about the ethics of journalism to make a sound judgment, so I think it best just to keep my opinions to myself, at least for the time being.

Are bloggers journalists? Should they receive the same constitutional protections that traditional journalists have enjoyed? This is a debate that is raging in the blogsphere right now, and I haven’t quite resolved it for myself. I believe that low-level bloggers like myself document what they see for their own enjoyment, and are held to no ethical yardstick other than their own personal standards. Other bloggers, who have audiences in the tens of thousands, are de facto journalists and owe it to the people who read their work to adhere to some sort of defined ethical code.

It’s an interesting debate, and one, which the journalism and blogging communities will have to wrestle with. Until then, I think its best to listen to your little guiding voice and apply your own personal code of ethics.