Confined spaces on ships continue to exact a heavy – and unacceptable – casualty toll on seafarers. So it’s heartening to note that Bob Couttie’s The SafeSpace Project is making steady progress: at least a dozen entities (Marine Café Blog is one of them) have come on board as official supporters. Meanwhile, we are having to deal with another kind of hazardous space. It’s called editorial space, which, although not posing physical danger, can be the source of much aggravation. To put it simply, some readers don’t like some of the stuff they read in the blog.
It has got to the point where we need to clarify two points:
First, this is a blog and not a news website. A blog, by definition, is subjective and even opinionated. Marine Café Blog is also no ordinary blog. It’s a free-spirited site where we love to call a spade a spade. On the other hand, we are not into scoring points or much less into soiling reputations. We blog candidly and honestly in the belief that only when issues are freely and openly discussed and not swept under the rug can they be truly addressed. How else can changes for the better take place? Alas, some people apparently expect us to write only what they want to see on their PC monitors. Such readers – and they actually comprise a minority – should go somewhere else for their reading fare. We’re nobody’s stooge and we don’t have flavoured coffee or decaf on the menu.
Second, editorial space in Marine Café Blog is free. We don’t do what is known in the trade as “advertorials” – i.e., advertisements promoting the interests of a corporate sponsor but disguised as editorial material. We have space for paid banner ads to serve that purpose. When we blog about certain companies, it’s because they have a new product that could benefit the maritime industry or they’re doing something that’s newsworthy or worth emulating (e.g., a humanitarian project or some activity related to CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility). We’re open to press releases. We’re open to contributed articles. And, not least of all, we’re open to comments.
The bottom-line: editorial space in the blog is open to everyone but it isn’t for sale. We shall keep it that way. We shall also continue to maintain an independent editorial policy unadulterated by pecuniary interest and guided by a desire to serve the maritime community at large. The positive feedback we’ve been getting from many of our readers worldwide tells us we’re doing something right. ~Barista Uno
