Must be a slow news day over at News, or something (despite, erm, the NSW election, and lots of other stuff happening). In an irony so stark you’d think a minimally awake subeditor would pick it up, the Australian has run a tendentious piece from The Sunday Times claiming that blogging is dying because either Lindsay Lohan doesn’t update her “blog” (maybe it’s against the rehab rules?) or that lots of people start blogs which they then lose interest in.
Where’s the irony? One of the anonymous blogs which Murdoch has declared will be the feature of news links to this piece and asks:
Are personal weblogs destined to go the way of the CB radio? The extreme failure rate of online diaries has sparked suggestions that blogs may be destined to become a footnote in the history of computing.
Intriguingly, this “new development” – the death of blogging – is framed on the Australian’s blog through lifting lines that Guy Rundle penned for Crikey back in May 2006. Read it and weep. Maybe, if News journos have to nick metaphors from ghostly Crikey articles, what we actually should be talking about is the death of intelligent journalism.
Maybe Paul Kelly’s the culprit? Could he be sick of having to write mini-columns as blogs (and then get comprehensively carpetted by most commenters, perhaps because they contain zero analysis and just rehash government talking points)? So sick of it that he’s lost without a good subbie? No one to clean up his prose after a hard night?
The NSW poll has a series of vital political messages. It reveals the formidible political alliance of the Labor Party, the unions and war chest they can amass against Howard’s so-called hated industrial laws.
Way to mangle syntax, Paul!
If anyone’s in any doubt about the health of the Australian blogosphere, go check out the always excellent Missing Link at Troppo. And it’s worth observing, while we’re on the subject, that a long overdue editorial decision has been made at Catallaxy, which will greatly improve its commenter-friendliness, with the Bird being locked firmly in his cage.
whoever wrote that sunday times piece needs to assess their talents as a journalist. it is stupid measuring how well something is doing by how many people have stopped doing it.
1) blogging is a qualitative practice.
2) there is the issue of the database (CB radio = no database). the article references this (‘ghost blogs’ in search engines).
3) Lastly, assumption of media involving people having ’something to say’ (archaic transmission model of media circulation), rather than having ’something to discuss’ (newer immanent event-based models of media with episodic publics, etc)
anyone with any sense of what is going on with the interwebs would’ve laughed at the article, and then slapped the author in the head with a trout.
Damn, if blogging is dead than I’m gonna have to find something else to waste time with. Anyone got any suggestions? I’m thinking either needlework or skydiving.
CB Radio dead??!!!???? Someone better tell Bannerman then. He’s still chatting on his on an almost daily basis.
That’s “Imminent Death of the ‘net predicted. Film at 11.” Does no-one read the classics anymore? Furrfu.
Talking about classics, ’tis a while since I’ve seen the good old ROT-13.
more exciting internet trends, such as posting home videos on YouTube or collecting new friends on MySpace.
Mwahahah. Collecting new friends on MySpace? It’s a great resource for people with something to put forward like artists and musicians, but a purely recreational MySpace space is – to my limited experience anyway – laughable. I’ve seen my younger relatives’ MySpaces with “friends” section full of creepy guys called Kevin or similar from Utah.
Oh why do we bother? fish. Barrel.
I dunno. Being able to turn out 500-odd words before deadline is far more important than making sense, or having something original, new or factual to say.
It’s not like this columnist will get called into the boss’s office in 18 months and be told “Look, people are actually blogging, you’re out of touch and we’ll have to let you go”.
For PC:
Qnegu Inqre vf Yhxr Fxljnyxre’f Sngure
Bu, naq Trbetr Yhpnf vf n cergragvbhf jnaxre jubfr zbivrf jvyy ybfr nyy gurve frafr bs sha naq orpbzr nf obevat nf tbvat gb puhepu
There is a ROT-13 cypherer/decypherer here.
Or even tigtog. Brain. On. Check.
Even I have taken up blogging by myself again, with a terribly technical note over my self-titled digs.
Quite aside from my shameful abuses of admin privileges at Club Troppo.
David: Cebhq gb or zvfgnxra sbe Gvtgbt nal gvzr.
‘Furrfu’ is what got you confused, for it is reminiscent of pussycats both in and out of code.
gvtgbt – ebg 13 vf fgvyy hfrq bppnffvbanyyl ol hf byq fxbby qvruneqf va gryyvat wbxrf va rznvyf naq fhpu naq jvguubyqvat gur chapu yvar be tvirnjnl bs gur cybg yvar vand gi be zbivr fubj.
Abg hfrq n ybg va oybtf – ohg lbh arire xabj – guvf zvtug fgneg n geraq.
Have to go and check the spaminator. It seems to be letting a lot of bumph through!
I hope so…otherwise I looked at the word ‘tigtog’ and saw ‘Pavlov’s Cat’ and am getting some sort of dyslexia-related distorder.
Gurer vf nyfb gur byq gevpx bs znxvat gur ‘fcbvyre’ grkg gur fnzr pbybhe nf gur onpxtebhaq
Yes well this is The Sunday Times and it is also Perth,where people want it to be 1950,and think that DLS is the devils work,because it adds an hour to their day.
Also that AFL players nice midle class boys all, can take drugs but its none of our business,as long as they win,where sports jurnos that work for all Perth media outlets knew about it but where to scared or to fond of the perks to say anything.
And where it is being swept under the carpet again
Back in the Usenet days, all of the text was black (and monospaced) and all of the backgrounds were white, so rot13 was the only option
Blogging is pretty time consuming, and lots of people drift in and out of it (I’m on my second proper blog at the moment, but I had four or five distinct web sites, some quite blog-like, before blog was even a word). Getting a real job, or a life, might not leave enough time to devote to it for many people. I don’t think it’s surprising that people drift in and out of blogging, but I suspect that there will be a net increase for some time to come.
I personally haven’t updated my blog in over a week, mainly because nothing has tweaked my interest sufficiently at a time I had the luxury of devoting a few minutes to writing something. It’s not dead, just sleeping!
FXH: “gvtgbt – ebg 13 vf fgvyy hfrq bppnffvbanyyl ol hf byq fxbby qvruneqf va gryyvat wbxrf va rznvyf naq fhpu naq jvguubyqvat gur chapu yvar be tvirnjnl bs gur cybg yvar vand gi be zbivr fubj.
Abg hfrq n ybg va oybtf – ohg lbh arire xabj – guvf zvtug fgneg n geraq.”
Finally! Some people who actually understand what I’ve been talking about!
fgrraxva’ areqf
PC:
Njjjj – tebhc uht!
Anyone to the left of Tim Blair noted Virginia Trioli’s thoughts on this matter?
Following Captain Wacky’s link:
Daily Kos? The top of the table of global blogging?
More like the Little Green Kossacks’ Boys’ Club’s vaguely-liberal-left-wing faction.