Six weeks have now passed since I filed my first report on riverScrap.com - the latest, perhaps boldest manifestation of my unwavering commitment to cast aside the shackles of a 9-5 working week (shackles to which, I reluctantly admit, I had only been tethered for some 15 months).
Over the course of the past month-and-a-half, this endeavour has provided me with much cause for optimism. Last Sunday, for example, my blog counter tallied a whopping 5,033 unique visitors. Admittedly, 80 per cent of those hits stemmed from one particularly wretched story that appeared to strike a chord with various viral communities. But there were other positive signs too.
riverScrap.com has already been visited by residents of six of the world's seven continents (shame on you, Antarcticans). Some of the more exotic countries to have turned to this blog for news include Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Zimbabwe, Mali and Brunei Darussalam. What's more, the majority of my articles are being generously voted up on Reddit - my news-sharing community of choice.
And yet in spite of these early signs of encouragement - and indeed my growing belief that the meritocracy of social media websites will continue to spell success for riverScrap.com - one criticism has consistently been raised. Longstanding friends and new acquaintances alike have both levied a disturbing charge at my feet: namely, that my blog lacks opinion. That my voice is suffocated by journalistic propriety.
In this editorial, therefore, I tackle the question of whether or not riverScrap.com has a perspective of its own. The answer: a resounding and indignant cry of YES! Of course it does! But it is an opinion free of the crass and blundering pontification of The Sun, The Telegraph, The Independent and all those other rags who seem to take their readership for such fools.