political commentator * author * publisher * bookseller * radio presenter * blogger * Conservative candidate * former lobbyist * Jack Russell owner * West Ham United fanatic * Email iain AT iaindale DOT com
Friday, August 11, 2006
Why Do Newspapers Hate Bloggers?
Read THIS incisive article by Sunny Hundal from Pickled Politics on Comment is Free. It examines why newspaper journalists appear to hate bloggers and the implications of US bloggers being instrumental in unseating Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman.
Probably because anyone can start a blog and start having opinions - whereas journalists have to work their way up through the chain over a number of years to get to where they have got.
Bloggers are anonymous too, and journalists cannot cope with that either. They are a constantly evolving entity that cannot easily be pinned down.
I don't like many bloggers... but I don't like many journalists either.
Unlike the Palmer, here it is argued that Iain is absolutely spot on. Bloggers like Iain are not anonymous (some might even say that Iain is conspicuous to a point of necessary ubiquity). Neither is the Kos. Nor, even, is the mighty Guido.
And to partake of Guido's line of argument and elaborate further, Bloggers are the new Kommentariat. They redefine borders with, fundementally, honesty, knowledge and from-the-hip sincerity. The anonymous ones ague in their entropy.
That is why the kommentariat - from the Grauniad to the Hurleygraph and the London Whims - have now imitated them and put their correspondents (and proxies) on notice to emulate the blogosphere.
Yet as Iain and Guido have proven instictively yet to their own ends, it is too late for established media. Their envy is palpable. The Guardian may roll out its columnists as pseudo bloggers, but it is the Torygraph - and inevitably, one day, the Indie - who have rolled them out at gunpoint.
But Guido and Iain have constituents. Thus the most intriguing problematic is not how but when blogs will be fully rolled out at local levels, with the strategic bloggers deriving yet more content from them.
Blogging is spontaneity. Imagine hard-wiring the greatest columnists (let's put, argument's sake, Sidney Blumenthal, Simon Jenkins and Max Hastings together in a big cluster-mupp) and unleashing them. Oh, the Grauniad and Huffington already did that. Er, but they also post stuff that otherwise would have been on 2-weeks notice? Are we suffering from a surfeit of the real?
Thus in a Baudliarrian dialectic, Bloggers find immediate clarity.
And a good thing too.
What matters as the next phase of the process is how established bloggers definitively affect not so much political discource as finite political action. The signs are that they are already.
And as Guido especially, and Iain in all honesty have shown, you can have fixed assets, speak the truth and you cannot be broken.
A more pure exercise of substantive democratic action - especially in an era of fascist hysteria - could not be found.
At least until the bloggers are blocked and de-rascinated by intimidation of their corporate owners (typepad - take a page from cryptome and guido's books - richard tomlinson would appreciate that).
Problem is: unless all phone lines are cut, every site is destroyed, blogging will re-iterate infinitely in the interests of truth. Something that Fleet Street can, and never will, digest. There'll always be more surplus bandwith than moribung paper y'all.
Though the loony Democratic Connecticut decision to unseat the Jewish Lieberman with anti-American and anti-war campaigner is hardly a proud moment for blogging is it?
In so defining them he manages not only to belittle the argument, but also to cast detractors in the role of mindless bigoted victimisers.
Hi deepstoat. In that article I clearly listed examples of what I thought were hyperbolic editorials. You may disagree. I'm not painting the entire right as Islamophobes. I'm saying that if people want to jump on bandwagons for particular agendas, they have to be careful who they jump in with. This applies to the SWP as much as it applies to right-wing groups.
My main issue is merely that I don't think there is that much nuanced commentary on the current state of British Muslim communities. People are shepherded into "moderate" or "extremist" tags without much thought.
Probably because anyone can start a blog and start having opinions - whereas journalists have to work their way up through the chain over a number of years to get to where they have got.
ReplyDeleteBloggers are anonymous too, and journalists cannot cope with that either. They are a constantly evolving entity that cannot easily be pinned down.
I don't like many bloggers... but I don't like many journalists either.
Unlike the Palmer, here it is argued that Iain is absolutely spot on. Bloggers like Iain are not anonymous (some might even say that Iain is conspicuous to a point of necessary ubiquity). Neither is the Kos. Nor, even, is the mighty Guido.
ReplyDeleteAnd to partake of Guido's line of argument and elaborate further, Bloggers are the new Kommentariat. They redefine borders with, fundementally, honesty, knowledge and from-the-hip sincerity. The anonymous ones ague in their entropy.
That is why the kommentariat - from the Grauniad to the Hurleygraph and the London Whims - have now imitated them and put their correspondents (and proxies) on notice to emulate the blogosphere.
Yet as Iain and Guido have proven instictively yet to their own ends, it is too late for established media. Their envy is palpable. The Guardian may roll out its columnists as pseudo bloggers, but it is the Torygraph - and inevitably, one day, the Indie - who have rolled them out at gunpoint.
But Guido and Iain have constituents. Thus the most intriguing problematic is not how but when blogs will be fully rolled out at local levels, with the strategic bloggers deriving yet more content from them.
Blogging is spontaneity. Imagine hard-wiring the greatest columnists (let's put, argument's sake, Sidney Blumenthal, Simon Jenkins and Max Hastings together in a big cluster-mupp) and unleashing them. Oh, the Grauniad and Huffington already did that. Er, but they also post stuff that otherwise would have been on 2-weeks notice? Are we suffering from a surfeit of the real?
Thus in a Baudliarrian dialectic, Bloggers find immediate clarity.
And a good thing too.
What matters as the next phase of the process is how established bloggers definitively affect not so much political discource as finite political action. The signs are that they are already.
And as Guido especially, and Iain in all honesty have shown, you can have fixed assets, speak the truth and you cannot be broken.
A more pure exercise of substantive democratic action - especially in an era of fascist hysteria - could not be found.
At least until the bloggers are blocked and de-rascinated by intimidation of their corporate owners (typepad - take a page from cryptome and guido's books - richard tomlinson would appreciate that).
Problem is: unless all phone lines are cut, every site is destroyed, blogging will re-iterate infinitely in the interests of truth. Something that Fleet Street can, and never will, digest. There'll always be more surplus bandwith than moribung paper y'all.
Though the loony Democratic Connecticut decision to unseat the Jewish Lieberman with anti-American and anti-war campaigner is hardly a proud moment for blogging is it?
ReplyDeleteIn so defining them he manages not only to belittle the argument, but also to cast detractors in the role of mindless bigoted victimisers.
ReplyDeleteHi deepstoat. In that article I clearly listed examples of what I thought were hyperbolic editorials. You may disagree. I'm not painting the entire right as Islamophobes. I'm saying that if people want to jump on bandwagons for particular agendas, they have to be careful who they jump in with. This applies to the SWP as much as it applies to right-wing groups.
My main issue is merely that I don't think there is that much nuanced commentary on the current state of British Muslim communities. People are shepherded into "moderate" or "extremist" tags without much thought.