Tim Blair continues to highlight the weirdness that often pervades Margo Kingston’s Webdiary. Some time ago, I wrote about the particular insularity of the approach of its community, and the attention paid to a sort of mini-bureaucracy, now including titles like General Manager.
Reading over the thread Tim linked to, there seems to be an insistent note sounded - and not just by Editors and Management team members - that Webdiary is “more than a blog” or “not a blog”:
I agree Debra, blogging is an egalitarian medium for communication which is why people like yourself have a blog. Webdiary is more than a blog. It is a professional on-line publication in the developing world of the new media that seeks to publish professional-quality input from both its contributors and its posters. And with all due respect to both parties, it is the needs of the readers who take precedence. As editors and moderators, we assist the readers by presenting the posts and contributions in the most professional way possible.
So, by inference, whatever Webdiary is now, it’s not an egalitarian medium.
At least at any rate, the question of whether Margo’s readership would follow her from the SMH appears to have been answered. Based on their estimate of about 2000 readers a day, it’s around a half of the readership of this humble blog that dares to speak its own name.
In another context, Fyodor wrote:
Third, on your blog you can say anything you like. Likewise, others on their blogs. If they want to take your oped apart on their site, they will. You have the same privilege with anything they write. Any idiot like me can join in and gleefully take the piss out of you or them. Nothing is sacred and nobody gives a flying fark where you went to school or where you’ve published. If your ideas don’t stack up, they’ll be knocked down.
Welcome to Ozblogistan.
Precisely. Appeals to authority and status don’t and shouldn’t work in the blogosphere.
As I’ve suggested before in a thread on a post by Don at Catallaxy, there’s little likelihood in my view that Ms Kingston will be able to earn a living from her site.
I really do think she doesn’t get new media. I’m absolutely unconvinced that the quality of the average post on her non-blog matches the quality of the average post on good Oz political blogs.
I think Margo needs to, as I’ve suggested before, well, get a blog, and compete on the basis of the quality of her work and her response to challenges to her ideas - with the rest of us.
There’s certainly material for an interesting social anthropology study into the community on Webdiary.
And - Longest. Comments. Policy. Ever.
And fuck me, but you can’t even freaking say feck!
Margo and little tim are a match made in heaven. Long may they continue their crazy doomed Charleston with eachother on the wing of a Curtiss JN-4D Jenny.
Meanwhile back in the reality-based community, we’re microwaving the popcorn and shoving eachother’s feet off the coffee table.
Heh. “Reality-based community”.
EP, you’re falling down in your role as a member of this community. I post a comment on a documented case of sperm theft, and do I get a response? Hello?
Meanwhile, back on topic, I agree, Nabs. Webdiarist contributors or commenters or people who don’t say fuck or whatever spend lengthy comments threads decrying tim and all his works. And…
Yeh, Margo’s got the pompous bluestockings and little tim’s got the crass rednecks.
Whereas here, we’ve got… purple thorax garments.
I think on inegalitarian commentary regimes, Evil Pundit and I stand united. Much like this (as suggested by Fyodor):
I’m absolutely unconvinced that the quality of the average post on her non-blog matches the quality of the average post on good Oz political blogs.
Phew - for a minute there I misread that as ‘…..absolutely convinced….’.
Bad blogosphere moment.
God forfend, Rob!
If I had the time, it might be interesting to do a content analysis of Webdiary - I suspect that one would find that a certain number of topics and themes recur without too much new content and without much emerging through debate.
More haiku per square byte here too!
And this implies a very passive model of readership:
Yeah, yeah, Mark, I’m getting to it!
I agree with Liam, for once.
Webdiary is just an attempt to replicate the hierarchical privileges of the old media in a new media space. It’s doomed to fail.
But it’s a great target for humour while it lasts.
“Webdiary is just an attempt to replicate the hierarchical privileges of the old media in a new media space. It‚Äôs doomed to fail.
But it‚Äôs a great target for humour while it lasts.”
And I agree with EP for once.
Another sauna moment!
Me too, actually.
Ps - that should get Liam disagreeing again fairly promptly…
Cold night in Vegas for September - wouldn’t mind being in a sauna!
Nonesensce. It’s an extraordinary advernture on paripacitive deoamracy that transcends’ hte dull and ineffectual limitiation’s of merely voting, into. Yes, not! Happy, John?
Sorry, channelling Tim B.
Um, it might just be me, but I’m terrified of blogging. I’ve just found out my mum has been reading my blog…
I have to admit, I’m in a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Webdiary. It really depends on the week. I think that Webdiary is trying to get some mainstream acceptance in a similar fashion to Crikey. Unfortunately the level of the debate is often very low. Often the left and the right just sit in their respective positions completely entrenched. Sometimes though, people do shift positions a little and some real debate happens. Then it’s worth the zillions of rants on old topics that everyone is really, really over.
Kim, you are welcome to sauna with me anytime. May I suggest a clothes-optional location in Germany, say Baden-Baden?*
* sister city of Wagga Wagga
actually Margo and timbo’s site share one common ground.
no sense of humour.
no chance of that here!!
As I’ve said before, I find Margo Kingston frankly unreadable. The good news is, though, that one doesn’t even need to dip one’s toe in her blog/whatever to taste its hilarity. Thus, from yesterday’s Age http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/diarist-sets-sail-with-online-newspaper/2005/09/11/1126377203980.html :
“Taking ads on the site is possible, but some potential supporters are very “anti-ads”, so a decision on that has been deferred”
Oh, diddums - the cashed-up boomers (at a wild guess) who are Kingston’s hard-core readers (”supporters” is a malapropism for the perennial hands-in-their-pockets, negatively-geared generation) are “anti-ads”! Always happy to sail through life on the basis of Other People’s Money — free uni and a free ABC (meaning an institution that once actually made Australian TV drama) — they now can’t bear a little banner-ad defiling their chi-chi laptop screen‚Äôs chakra.
Talking of Byron Bay sea-changers, Kingston’s financial plan is equally cringe-inducing:
“Kingston has been quoted as saying she’ll sell assets if necessary to keep the site going for its first 12 months”
That is, she‚Äôll be using her tax-free, capital gain windfall in the Sydney property market to cross-subsidise her vanity blog-on-high. Now, I would have thought that a person who professes to have a social conscience might think that there are lotsa things, a teensy bit more pressing, that wallops of unearned cash could be spent on — but, no. Motto: never underestimate a boomer‚Äôs vapid greed.
“”Kingston has been quoted as saying she‚Äôll sell assets if necessary to keep the site going for its first 12 months”"
Further to Mr Watson, I have to suggest that maybe she should get a job like almost every other blogger in the freaking world!
Sounds like she’s trying to paint herself as an artist suffering for her art, for feck’s sake!
Look, if Fyodor can get paid a wage and so obviously do NO WORK AT ALL during the day because he’s too busy blogging about everything under the sun then a fully accredited journalist can surely do the same.
[I have just had a 2 1/2hour lunch with the man, so don’t think that his corresponding absence from the blogs was due to him actually working.]
Presumably someone employs Nabakov and Homercles as well. etc etc
Harry, I’m actually an ASIO agent, so it’s all part of the service. Keeping tabs on subversives like yourself at taxpayers’ expense is what the Global War on Terror is all about: grilling the small fry for shock ‘n’ awe effect. There’s nothing like working in a growth industry funded by taxpayers.
Thanks for paying, BTW. My lunch budget only covers me for a sandwich and a milkshake. Now you be a good lad and return that copy of Tropic of Cancer to the library. Don’t make me bring the heat down on you.
/echelon out
Well, if the CIA can fund and maintain Quadrant it’s only fair that ASIO should fund our Fyodor.
Grilled small fry… stop that, you’re making me hungry.
“Margo and timbo‚Äôs site share one common ground”
One? How bout adding:
* Old media ’stars’ running what are effectively celeblogs
* Control freakery over comments
* Hyper-polemic
Not that others don’t do this, but I think pots call kettles black a lot in their rarified world.
Meanwhile back in Nabs’ reality…
Nice looking sauna they have in Baden-Baden, haiku (also the town where Dostoevsky’s The Gamblers is set…).
Are you male or female?
Heh, I’ve been to the spa at Baden Baden. It is very pleasant (and I’m sure would only be enhanced by Kim’s presence). Leave your shyness at the door!
No point in wearing a cossie in the spa!
Ps - Thanks, Andrew
Just flirtin…
Say that after you’ve been through the steel wool massage.
Drifting back on topic. I haven’t seriously read Web Diary for a while - it tends to get a bit too samey. OTOH I’m not sure that you can compare WD and Tim Blair’s site. I think WD is quite prepared to accept comment from anyone - left, right or in-between as long as they stay civil. Blair’s site (from what little I’ve seen) tends to be the opposite, only right and as uncivil (to anything non Blair authorised) as possible or fuck off.
While WD was attached to the SMH I think it had to have some sort of strict comment moderation otherwise there would have been no chance that anything useful could be said, simply because of the traffic volume that must have been coming its way.
Now, well, I’m inclined to agree with Mark. It’s a blog and nothing more. And if I posted there I wouldn’t get one of these cool Riddler question marks next to my name.
And they don’t do virtual saunas, Andrew!
I don’t know - I’m feeling all hot and bothered!
I might put up a dedicated flirting thread after midnight!
It seems everybody loves to hate Margo. Fair enough. However hasn’t there been a slight misrepresentation of what she is aiming to do here? She hasn’t quit her job to write a blog. No matter how doomed to failure you may judge her project to be, what she is trying to do is set up an online journalism site in opposition to the capitalist media. If she can do it, and I doubt it, then good luck to her. I admire the attempt. And if I was a journo I’d join her. Once the mortgage was secured.
There’s a few US sites succeeding in doing this, so it’s not impossible but she may fail for lack of suitably equipped contributors and of course market size. Much as most independent paper-based publications also fail.
But in practice, wbb, whatever the aspirations, it seems to be very similar to a blog. Would you care to define the point of differentiation?
I think WD has been a bit of a mixture. Opinion pieces from Margo and others really fit into the blogging mould. But also, to be fair, Margo has been more proactive than most bloggers. ie she does some journalistic things - goes to press conferences and asks questions, as an obvious example.
The point of differentiation are the aspirations, Kim.
At this stage it looks like a blog, sure - but it aims to become a news outlet - a place for independent journalism.
I doubt that Margo can succeed. Most journos need to eat too. And w/out journos her vision will struggle. She has a coterie of enthusiastic amateurs and some of them may have the desire to commit for the long haul. She has obviously stitched up a 50K benefactress, but it’s a long way to go from there.
I’d be wrapped if she can get it off the ground. An alternative to Murdoch and Fairfax will open up room for more info to flow into the public realm.
It’s trying to be another Crikey, but less gossipy about which businessman is currently sticking it up which other businessman and more politically aligned.
To be honest I never read it, but I love the idea.
What wbb said. I think she is genuinely trying to establish an independent online journalism forum. I’ve heard a couple of her interviews and she reckons she could get a couple of good journos on board, including her sister Gay Alcorn, for half a journo’s normal pay. Did I see her advertising for journos?
Fairfax seems to have changed in recent years. As a listed company they seem to have found growth, the unfortunate imperative that goes with being a public company, difficult. Apart from planning to insert ads into Webdiary, she said that Fairfax had bought an online dating agency at the same time they were sacking journos.
She admits that, like most of us, she hasn’t a clue as to how you’d find money without selling your soul. I think it’s sad, but she’s almost bound to fail.
I had shares in them for a while, but decided that as an investment they didn’t scrub up, so I sold out and haven’t regretted it.
On quality, I haven’t been able to keep up with all the stuff on Webdiary, and as a sometime contributor it is unseemly for me to comment on the others who contribute. I did cross-post on “Debt relief and poverty reduction” at Webdiary and at Larvatus Prodeo. I’d have to say that the comments on Webdiary stood up pretty well. I was also pleased with the comments on my Wallerstein piece last year. Probably Faifax will dump the archive eventually. Sigh!
I think ethical issues arise as well as the resourcing issues. Because (most) bloggers are not journalists, we have both constraints on our ability to attend press conferences and ring up people for interviews, and severe legal risk in using “sources” because we’re not journos. Margo will probably need a team of lawyers too. I also suspect much of her and other journalists’ ability to get information might depend as much on their institutional affiliation with Fairfax or whoever as their professional qualifications and skills. I would not be surprised if her access diminishes now that she’s out on her own.
Absolutely her access will be cut in the short run. Crikey was locked out of the budget lockup for eg. That’s the game the msm and the political establishment plays. That’s what this type of enterprise is trying to break. Is why I am cheered by the optimism of people who are prepared to give this type of thing a go. And if I’d have known that Brian was a WD person then I would have been reading it already!
Don’t get me wrong, wbb, I wish her well, it’s just that I think she might be better off writing a blog. In terms of organisational sociology, it seems to me that the mimicking of a corporate and hierarchical structure implies something about what her ideal-typical model of new gathering is (and it’s very top down) and there are significant signs of community dysfuntion apparent. It’s for these reasons, as well as the financial/access issues, that I think it’s probably bound to collapse.
It might be better for her and her contributors to think about how a blog might make a contribution rather than try and set up a sort of ghostly idealised Fairfax in cyberspace.
wbb, I have been contributing a bit to Webdiary since mid-2001 and the first piece I did was after the Tampa affair. I just tried to access it and was confronted with the need to cough up a password (I subscribe to a clutch of Fairfax publications). After I duly coughed up it was clear they were enlisting me to sell more product.
I’ve had long stretches of absence but back then you couldn’t get a word in edge-wise because the sandpit was well and truly occupied by two of the most prolific contributors - Tim Dunlop and Don Arthur.
Margot did say something about the ethics of Crikey which she didn’t agree with, but I don’t trust my memory enough to say what it was.
I’m not sure what Mark has in mind about community dysfunctions, but the RWDB problem was quite severe until she instituted a civility policy.
I think Jack Robertson’s editorial efforts were not appreciated by everyone, but I’m not sure if he’s still around.
I guess the ‘no anonymity without a good excuse’ is a bit different from blogging. On sources, I think Margo has quite good contacts with pollies on both sides, but Mark might be right about less access outside Fairfax.
I don’t think Margo could run a blog without moderating all comments. She would descend under a torrent of vitriol.
Brian, refer to my previous post on that.
Kim, afraid I’m male
Not that there’s anything wrong
With that in a spa
No, no problem at all, haiku.
I thought perhaps the link was to a candid snap.
Ah, if only I looked that good in the buff!