We started Rooftop Review in July of this year as way of motivating the pair of us to write more. Alas, dear reader, finding the time to sit down and write 600-odd words has turned into something of struggle. When we first started talking abut RR, we promised ourselves to try and escape the general blogosphere hivemind. There’d be no leadership speculation, no carbon tax banter and most of all, no Newspoll coverage. Somewhere amongst all this greenhorn dreaming, I forgot that proper analysis takes both time and effort. In my final year of undergraduate study, I had neither of these.
Any time I sat down to pen a new post, I couldn’t help but feel that I was regurgitating the same lines that had already been churned out by the talking heads. Unfortunately, timing meant that I normally sat down to write a RR piece on a Sunday afternoon – normally resting a sore head after a very tired and emotional evening the night before. Given the three or four days that normally passed between an event of note and my chance to write, any value that could have been added had already been chipped in by the Twittersphere and various other platforms. This isn’t a complaint, more so proof that my old school ideals of writing a thoughtful and considered piece over a number of days have now been replaced by the need for brevity and immediacy.
This year, I intend to change the way I approach RR. Instead of aspiring to be something we’re not, I want to take things back to basics. More stats and graphs and less speculation. I want to practice basic journalistic skills rather than idle chit-chat. We also hope to open RR up to more contributors, and with it readers.
And with that, a very happy new year to you all.
