Me touching the Boeing 787 Dreamliner ZA003

In the past year or so, I have been on quite a few adventures where I was covering an event with legacy media there also. These are the fine folks that you see with big cameras and fancy video trucks. Most of them do an outstanding job reporting the news in an interesting and effective way. But what they have in training, experience, talent, a mass audience and equipment, most lack the passion for aviation.

Don’t get me wrong, that is alright. They have a job to do. Many will report on many different types of stories, not just on aviation.  They have a story to get, a deadline to meet. They deliver or print their story and move on to the next. They are trained in journalism or communications and love finding the story and sharing it, no matter what the topic might be.  There is nothing wrong with how this works, but a blogger looks at a story in a very different way.

Most bloggers don’t have training in journalism. Heck the king of aviation blogging, Jon Ostrower (aka FlightBlogger) and I have degrees in Political Science. We picked a subject because we love the subject, want to learn more and want to share that passion with others.  I know in my case, the passion came first, followed by honing my skills in writing, editing, photography, videography and networking.

So what does this photo represent? To me it represents the difference between bloggers and the legacy media. The photo is of me touching the Boeing 787 Dreamliner for the first time, as I was taking my interior tour. I just couldn’t help it. I felt like a sugar-deficient kid in a candy store. I was so excited to not only get inside the Dreamliner, but to touch it for the first time. Yes, I was a nerd touching the side of the plane, but it is something that none of the legacy media folks did and it put a huge smile on my face.

They were more concerned about the proper angles, getting the sound bites, then off to edit to get it on the news.  I took my own photos and video, but I made sure to slow down and realize I was frek’n inside a Dreamliner. At that time, very few people had been inside a Dreamliner and I enjoyed every moment, knowing it was something special.

I freely admit that I am not a professional journalist or even an airline expert. However, I have a huge passion for aviation and learning about new things.  I think (and really hope) that passion comes through on my blogs and you sometimes get to learn something new.

All my blogs might not resonate with a wider audience, like legacy media has to shoot for, but I am happy most blogs can resonate with an audience that shares my interest in aviation and the airline business.