J'Accuse is the platform for Maltese blogger Jacques Rene Zammit, a lawyer living in Luxembourg, who is doing a great service to the
Maltese blogosphere with his prolific writing. In his first post back in March he wrote about
joining the Kinnie Generation and warned his readers of his irony, black humour and lack of rules.
While still in Malta last year, Jacques was running a radio duscussion show for
Campus FM on which he invited me twice - first pitting me against Simon Busuttil and a few weeks later with Joanna Drake in both cases discussing European policy. I enjoyed the discussions during the EP election campaign and Jacques was a fair and just moderator.
Incidentally, I had first met both Busutill and Drake together just over ten years before. At that time, I was president of the
National Youth Council and we had launched a national information campaign about the pros and cons of the European Union. It was the first campaign of it's kind and it involved seminars, debates, media events and the publication of a detailed report about EU threats and opportunities for the young. We had decided to commission the report jointly to Simon and Joanna. It was a report that introduced them to the Maltese public as experts on the subject. The report focused on the opportunities and they later established themselves as two of the most vocal supporters of EU membership. Simon Busuttil is today a member of the
European Parliament and Joanna Drake is
the newly appointed head of the
EU Representation office in Malta, a position for which I was also shortlisted by the
European Commission. I take this opportunity to congratulate Joanna and wish her well in her three year appointment.
Back to blogging,
an entry posted yesterday by Jacques gave me the opportunity to write and post about the nature of Wired Temples and my blogging plans for the future.
Toni Sant, the brains behind
MaltaMedia who believes that
the Maltese islands will one day sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean, also participated in the discussion. The first documented reply to a blog on Malta's mainstream media was the
Maltese Curia's reply to Toni Sant's blog via Wired Temples and, as Jacques notes, Lorna Vasallo's
answer to J'Accuse was the first reply by a newspaper columnist. Jacques, whose blog gained a surge of hits in mid June
thanks to the Beck effect, also refers to the useful
article by Rebecca Cefai on Maltese blogging published a few days ago on
Tabellina. Majistral from Malta9Thermidor
has posted a response in which he says that the pace of Maltese blogging is seasonal. He also recalled
a previous entry in which he had predicted the premature death of Maltese blogging. With added hyperlinks,
I am reproducing here what I wrote on J'AccuseAs Toni says, my move to MaltaMedia is not linked to any restrictions regarding the contents of my blog. Although I keep to the daily commitment of posting on WT, it is natural that some days/weeks are more active than others. The last few weeks have been unusually busy with Eurobarometer work so my blog surfing time was severely compromised. But J'Accuse is one of the blogs I never miss. And my July top ten blog is coming up very soon!
Wired Temple's spirit and raison d'etre remain unchanged. Linking to other Maltese blogs is one important feature. I usually link to those which are recently created and there have been fewer of those lately. I agree that it would be good to have more links and interaction with regular and active blogs such as yours. Blogging is more fun if we can engage more effectively with news items and with each other's posts. That is what I had in mind when I started the Weekly News Digest on Wednesdays.
One other important feature of WT is the regular link to bloggers who visit Malta and write about their travel experiences. Some of these accounts may lack in depth when viewed by expert anthropologists like Athena but the idea is to create a kind of compendium/archive of Malta references from the blogosphere. The same goes for Malta related items from international websites that are also featured on WT.
Those who are interested in reading more on this subject, I refer you to a fascinating book published by Encounters books in 2000 edited by Peter Serracino Inglott and Petra Bianchi with an intro by Guido De Marco. The book, titled 'Encounters with Malta' is a collection of accounts of Malta as seen by the eyes of visitors throughout Malta's history. I strongly recommend it.
As Kenneth has discovered, I will soon start a more personal blog which I will use as a platform for my opinions and comments about a wide range of subjects. Wired Temples will stay as it is but my more personal and political notes will be channeled via robertmicallef.com/blog - but first i need to update my website. More on that later.