Friday, May 09, 2008

The Rise & Fall of the Commentariat

Guido has written about the EI event on Wednesday evening HERE. I have just listened to the Podcast HERE. I recommend you do too. The panel consisted of Charles Clarke, Matthew Taylor, Julia Hobsbawm, Danny Finkelstein and Simon Jenkins. Charles Clarke's remarks were particualrly laughable.

Many of the contributors spent much of their time rubbishing blogs and telling us how insignificant they are. In fact they spent so much time doing it that my I really thought they protested just that little bit too much.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Charles Clarke probably doesn't much like computers because his fingers are too fat to work a keyboard.

Is he still wearing that pathetic "designer stubble" in the belief that it hides his six chins?

The turd.

Anonymous said...

I couldn't get through the whole thing, but I got the basic theme, they are shit scared of new technology. Blogs are here to stay, and they are not subject to the same union bias control, therefore you can get a glimpse of the truth also.

Anonymous said...

the answer Iain - is that the dead tree "commentariat" are AFRAID....

their position is being usurped by the likes of yourself, dizzy, DK, Guido and many many more...

it is a pity that they go into full-on rottweiller attack mode - whereas in America, the old media (and indeed the political parties) have positively EMBRACED the new media.

prime examples : Howard Dean, Obama and Ron Paul doing their fundraising via the internet...

Anonymous said...

so the "commentariat" offer us plebs a mere mp3 download link.

haven't they heard of bittorrent?


jesus wept... they are sooooooo behind the times.

keep blogging iain. as they say - dont let the bastards get you down..

Anonymous said...

listening to the charles clarke bit at around 17:00... to be fair , its interesting. he's not waffling and is expressing an opinion.

how refreshing!

BUT... he's clearly on the side of the commentariat.

key quote: "the blogs are not engaging in the issues at all" : at 18:03...

sorry charles. you dont have a clue do you...

Anonymous said...

Microsoft MSN guy at around 60:30 is bang on the money - points out that the blogs have held the commentariat to account regarding accuracy...

there's another word for it - "fisking"...