In comments on my previous post, Captain Wacky asked whether anyone to the left of Tim Blair had commented on Virginia Trioli’s anti-blog bleh. Tim wrote:
Along these lines, Virginia Trioli this morning introduced a segment on her 702 ABC show: “Wither blogging. It seems the much-hyped blogging phenomenon is disappearing. I say good riddance.�
Hey, at least during our brief reign we bloggers haven’t cost taxpayers a couple of hundred grand per year, which is the price paid (at least) for Virginia’s views. Her guest commentator for this segment was media lecturer Kate Crawford, who seemed slightly more fond of blogs than is her host; in fact, she said, some blogs are very good, and online audiences were becoming better at selecting quality blogs over “someone ranting about their cat�.
Then Kate named her favourite site. Daily Kos, she said, represented the very “top of the tableâ€? of global blogging. I don’t think Virginia had heard of it … otherwise her opinion of this flash-in-the-pan medium would probably be higher.
Here’s my take. What Tim said. Kate Crawford wrote a good book last year, and as a media specialist, she might be expected to be able to have a better read on the ’sphere (and to realise why TEH CAT BLOGGING also legitimately has a space on any sort of blog!). Hopefully, she’s educable! 
But what’s the point of Virginia Trioli’s dumb remarks? Her “views” are just a rehash of some pointless crud reprinted from the Sunday Times, which just rewrites a tired and silly meme. And it’s bloggers who are meant to be parasitic on the MSM? To be truthful, a lot of journos and op/edders are parasitic and lazy. Stories and opinions move in herds, and sources are rarely interviewed or new perspectives sought when they can be pulled straight from the interwires. At least with blogs, you get actual opinions. And lots more CATS!
I stated my unimpressed-ness about the interview over at Surfdom the other day but I don’t recall Ginny saying “good riddance.” I happen to have it recorded (don’t ask) so I will have another listen. Her attitude seemed to be more bemused ignorance than any kind of actual hostility. I thought Crawford was more disappointing in that regard because she was supposed to know what she was talking about, so I would have appreciated a more nuanced view. She was playing to a broad audience I guess.
“At least with blogs, you get actual opinions. And lots more CATS!”
According to various ecologists and the Victorian and NSW conservation departments, the Mountain Pygmy Possum (Burramys parvus) has declined to the point that local extinctions are almost inevitable due to the efforts of cats and foxes subsequent to the last bushfire season.
But, heh, fuck the natives, what about those cute little pussies on the ski slopes!!
Not being in Sydney, obviously I didn’t hear the interview, but I’m assuming because Tim has it as a direct quote, it was a direct quote.
*Chuckles* …. Ya think?
Irrespective of my earlier outburst, I still reckon you are ace, Kim. Thank you for taking up the slack from Mark. Cheers.
Amanda,
“Good riddance” came prior to the 10.00am news, in a promo for the following chat.
Indeed she did say that. Sigh.
Maybe Ms Trioli’s been reading the Surfdom thread, examining her work in less than glowing terms.
Can you link to it, please, adrian?
Gianna’s Man of Wood thread.
Thought it was after the interview though so that can’t be it.
Maybe she’s a dog person.
I’ll try: there?
Blogging’s not dead. It’s just evolving into pathetic political video “vodcasts”.
ps/- Hail to the cat bloggers!
I can just see the Bible-illuminators of Europe, ca 1460 complaining about ‘these new paper-based books’, and saying ‘good riddance’ as the book trade goes through a minor downturn.
However, the fewer stories on blogs that just link to and comment about a MSM story, the better. Blogs will be at their best when either going into serious depth that the MSM can’t, or reporting local news that the MSM ignore.
And surely Crawford can do better than the DailyKos echo-chamber? This is not a partisan thing, Little Green Footballs is just as bad.
She’s entitled to her opinion, and just because she disagrees with yours doesn’t make her dumb.
These days, I blog because I like communicating with my nice readers, and because it keeps me writing.
There are fifty million blogs in the world, and most of them are designed to let friends know what one’s up to.
At least with newspapers there’s an editor around somewhere (I’m not talking about the tabloid crud press).
Bloggers, like journalists, would do well not to get defensive about the “importance” of their craft.
When one only reads blogs sometimes and only reads the ones one likes, well, it’s like a black cloud lifting. Too much info (and especially too much crap info written by untalented drones and suck-ups) is not a good for the soul.
Not a good thing for the soul.
Ha – even Evil Pundit agrees with you, Kim! (What happened to his blog, anyway?)
Paying out on cat blogging (or any genre of blogging) is not what I would expect from somebody who claims to have a sensible grip on new media. It’s naive, actually, not to understand that putting down cat blogging and knit blogging (etc) serve a certain rhetorical function within certain blog triumphalist discourses.
It’s exactly equivalent to if she’d said blogging’s not all the badly edited rantings of teenage girls or the badly edited ravings of stay-at-home mothers.
I’ve been reading many of the first reviews Jane Austen’s novels got, recently. Similar sort of anxious desire to sort out the ‘worthy’ from the ‘trash’ (and you can guess into which category most of the anonymous male reviewers put Austen.)
His Honour made the point the other day that all the ‘I hate bloggers’ stuff in the MSM is just competitive snark. Expect it to continue, and to be unreasonable and silly etc. More competition tends to mean – at least in the long run – less revenue.
Culturally, too, there’s the fact that many journalists write poorly and need a sub to save their bacon (as a former sub, I’m pleased to see this). The better bloggers don’t, and I’m sure that irks as well.
I’m a bit surprised this kind of stuff is still going on, actually — isn’t it, like, so 2005?
Further to Laura’s point, it does seem to me to be part of traditional notions about high culture, of the common practice of advertising one’s own superiority by trashing something perceived to be beneath one, and of the common misunderstanding that blogging is a product requiring a value judgement, as distinct from a practice and a highly fluid means of exchange.
I do find it strange coming from Virginia, whom I remember from her Melbourne Uni days and wouldn’t have expected to take this kind of line. This from a woman who wanted to string up Helen Garner? How ironic. (Garner herself is far more open-minded and positive about blogging, incidentally.)
Teh MSM is juz jellus that their 2-page spread on their cat, mittens, was axed by teh evilz editor.
PC: Virginia Trioli is to Helen Garner what baked beans are to caviar.
Why doesn’t she take out her insecurities on the rising price of merlot, or the limited parking spaces in Rose Bay, instead of directing her venom towards blogging – a new and refreshing arena of dissent.
I’m so glad Trioli swanned up to sydney from Lygon Street even though her replacement is a gushing hockey sticks ingenue obsessed with sport.
It seems as if Trioli is to blogs and thought through opinion what Senator Heffernan is to broadband and email.
I’d rather see a picture of a cat anyday than listen to Trioli.
Virgina may wish “good riddance” to blogs, but her researchers may not be so happy if they disappeared.
Likewise, Mike Carlton is said to be no fan of blogs.
But you could hazard a guess that any number of stories they discuss in a week come directly from blogs, both Australian and international ones.
But why give credit where it’s due?
I’m continually surprised at just how well researched many news-focused blogs really are. In the US, sites like Crooks And Liars and Think Progress have become mandatory daily reading for thousands of journalists and researchers.
And on cat blogging : last year I ran a story on one of my blogs about how the UK government was warning that cats could be likely carriers of the bird flu virus and in the event of an outbreak, cats along with poultry and wild birds might need to be culled.
My post got picked up by two cat-related blogs and I had an extra 4000 visitors in one day. 4000! If you figure that perhaps 30% of a blog’s readers click through to the source of a story, those two cat blogs were pulling a huge daily readership. Quite amazing.
Teh cats is in our blogs, makin’ the MSM crazy.
A few months ago, wasn’t our Foreign Affairs minister making public statements about a purported ambulance bombing hoax that he’d based upon similar claims from a blogger?
Oh yeah, start chiselling the dates on the headstone. NOBODY reads blogs or gives them any credence.
WallisSimpson, Ms Ove has already cornered the market for opinion whinging about the help and all those smelly backpackers invading the eastern suburbs and the wonders of grange hermitage. She does it on her “blog” at The Australian.
Is blogging dead?
“Jazz isn’t dead; it just smells funny.” — Frank Zappa
Not in itself, no. But any claim that blogging is ‘disappearing’ or is likely to disappear appears to me to be dumb on its merits.
And as to the ‘good riddance’ bit…if Trioli going to sneeringly write off a whole segment of the population, expect them to be a bit snippy back.
How does the ABC pick its presenters anyway? Perhaps Trioli feels threatened because both her potential audience is being diluted, and potential applicants for her job are growing.
Little Green Footballs is truly awful. It made me both sad and angry when I had a look at it.
Laura, you probably knew this already but for the benefits of others, Jane Austen’s first book First Impressions was rejected by the publisher without him even seeing it. She went on to publish Sense and Sensibility, and then a full 14 years later re-visited that first book and after some revisions succeeded in publishing it.
Of course, it was Pride and Prejudice. Can you imagine a world without it?
As for blogging, it seems to me to be a little like popular romance. Highbrow literary critics argue passionately against the value of novelists like Barbara Cartland and Dan Brown. But when I worked at Dymocks, Brown had over 100 books on the shelf compared to, say, Jonathon Franzen (whose name I just plucked out of my head, I’m not declaring him the doyenne of highbrow literature…) So, it begs the eternal question of worth versus popularity. Cat blogging may be boring to some (myself included) but clearly it boasts a large fanbase.
I tend to think that blogging is fluid anyway. When old bloggers die, new ones take their place. It’s not exactly a dying form, it just has many different players at any given time.
Also, I’d like to point out how much I hate people citing blogs as being entirely characteristic of floral and/or poorly written self-indulgent prose about daily non-events and animals. It’s so ridiculously ignorant of the multitude of blogs that are none of these things.
Caz from The Spin Starts Here often sneers the above as criticism of her detractors. I think she kind of ignores the fact that she herself runs a blog.
As for blogging, it seems to me to be a little like popular romance. Highbrow literary critics argue passionately against the value of novelists like Barbara Cartland and Dan Brown. But when I worked at Dymocks, Brown had over 100 books on the shelf compared to, say, Jonathon Franzen (whose name I just plucked out of my head, I’m not declaring him the doyenne of highbrow literature…) So, it begs the eternal question of worth versus popularity. Cat blogging may be boring to some (myself included) but clearly it boasts a large fanbase.
That’s an interesting analogy, which could probably be extended further. In Australia, the ‘worthy’ Australian novels are artifically protected against some overseas competition by parallel importation laws – though in fact they really only protect the profits for a narrow group of Australian publishers. It’s the big sellers that tend to get frowned on, while they make all the money for the publishing industry – thereby bringing in profits which can be channeled into the ‘worthy’ projects. Another good example of this is the impact made by the Harry Potter books, which turned Bloomsbury from a niche publisher to a major international publishing house.
Maybe cat blogging does the same for the blogosphere!
My cat has been known to write her own blogposts. And she’ll scratch anyone who says cat blogging is boring.
What you need, Rebekka, is this.
Calling all felixophiles. On firedoglake.com March 26th 8PM article by TRex (need to go to page 2) there is a shot of what happens to some naughty cats when they trespaw upon an active keyboard that is not their own.
At this point in the current discourse it may be apposite to consider the words of that great proto-blogger, Dr Samuel Johnson.
You go, Doc!
Death of the blogs? This bloke doesn’t think so
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21467313-1702,00.html
Well, bad news for Senator Coonan if blogging is really dead.
‘Weblogging’ (as she insists on calling it) was held up as an example of the kinds of new alternative news sources which made the old cross-media protections redundant.
I guess if blogging is dead, she’d better back-peddle on those media reforms.
Oh so likely!
Also, only-slightly-relatedly, Youtube was also put forward as an example of the new media ‘diversity’. Now that it is being chased for ongoing and widespread copyright infringement, will Senator Coonan step back from previous statements regarding the validity of Youtube as an alternative news/entertatinment source?
Interesting question: Has Trioli ever read a blog? No, not those misbranded RSS feeds from the newspaper websites – real blog such as, say, this one?
Hand up who wants to approach her to put across our point of view on her show?
Seriously!
Go on her show??
She would say “Who are you? What do you want? Go Away! Empty my bin on the way out!”
But Wallis, Virginia is the voice of the people of Sydney. Why, once she even went out to Lakemba for lunch and shared some baklava with a taxi driver on the way back.
Pavlov’s Cat —
Now see, look at this stuff, quotated above, by your ould buddy Doctor Johnson…
“It is scarcely to be imagined through how many subordinations of interest, the ardour of party is diffused; and what multitudes fancy themselves affected by every satire or panegyrick on a man of eminence.”
Honestly, I ask you: WHAT THE FUCK IS HE TALKING ABOUT??!?
See you at the shack up in Ketcham, Idaho. Cheers.
–Hem
Now look here, I haven’t even mentioned Dr Johnson. That was Nabs.
Without blogs, where else would we find the coming of the Quantum Kitten?
Mr.Hemingway forgot to add that he has CATS NAMED AFTER HIM and would certainly have HIS Polydactyl Pussies on Friday CatBlogging and stuff you Virginia.
from About Cats.com
“Ernest Hemingway was an amazing man, with many talents and interests. He was also an inveterate cat-lover, because he admired the spirit and independence of cats. Hemingway acquired his first cat from a ship’s captain in Key West, Florida, where he made his home for a number of years. This cat, which may have been a Maine Coon, had extra toes (technically known as polydactyl, latin for “many digits”).
Today, approximately 60 cats, half of them polydactyl, make their home in the Ernest Hemingway Museum and Home, in Key West, protected by the terms of his will.
At least some of those cats are descendents of Hemingway’s first cat, and are given fanciful names, as he once did, after movie stars and even characters in his book. ”
Trioli has always irritated me.
and …
“Ariana Huffington of HuffingtonPost.com is planning to recruit large groups of citizen journalists from around the US to cover individual presidential campaigns for the 2008 election.
“Each volunteer reporter/blogger will contribute to a candidate-specific group blog — offering written updates, campaign tidbits, on-the-scene observations, photos, or original video,” she said.
The content produced will be shown on both HuffingtonPost.com as well as Jay Rosen’s NewAssignment.net. Around 40 or 50 people are expected to track individual campaigns with up to 100 covering the frontrunners. In the spirit of pro-am journalism, editors will review work as it comes in to find the most interesting content.
“Our volunteer reporters will aim to provide an authentic counter-narrative to the lockstep consensus we often get from the MainStream Media,” Huffington said.
Source: Market Watch
Interesting, and a good idea, CatBlogger, do you have a link?
That’s a straight cutnpaste and I got it following it’s sidebar listing on the journalism Watchdog Adrian Monk site
in an opinion disagreement between Huffington & Trioli, my money’s on The Huff.
OK, apologies, I did it from memory. this one is a proper copy.
The Adrian Monck site is very good value, as is ‘Adrian Monk’ in another way altogether.
“Teh cats is in our blogs, makin’ the MSM crazy.”
Who was the cat blogger who wrote “I’m in yr vege patch hidin my pooz”?
Zoe.
Oh poop (so to speak), sorry, link doesn’t work. Go to Crazybrave, then to Zoe’s Flickr pix and the set called Text On Ur Cat.
I wasn’t surprised when the rant-pack over at Tim Blair’s blog went off half-cocked (after all, they gotta work with what they got) based on Blair’s misrepresentation of my interview with Trioli . For fun, let’s just set the record straight. I was brought on her show to explain why the ‘death of blogging’ Sunday Times piece was *bollocks*. In my view, blogging is maturing as a medium and is more popular than ever. While blog registrations are levelling out here and in the US (as a recent study by Gartner has shown), blogs can be found in a host of different forms – submerging into mass and micro-media alike – not all of which show up on research registers (twitter, anyone?). Blogging is, in fact, more political and socially powerful than ever before. With this maturation of blogging, we’re also seeing a hierarchy emerge. This was my second point: we are seeing more readers gravitate to the larger, group blogs. At this point, I noted two examples of large blogs to Virginia: Tim Blair in Australia (funny how he didn’t remember that bit) and The Daily Kos. It’s ‘top in the table’ in terms of hits over the last 12 months, netting over 512,000 per day at the moment. I didn’t talk about the blogs I personally read obsessively, as that wasn’t why I was there. Neither do I think there’s anything wrong with cats (puhleaze). In fact, new media theorist Geert Lovink noted in a terrific presentation last year that despite all the talk about the revolutionary potential of blogs, the *most popular* topic on blogs is still… cats. So you can’t really talk about blogs without talking about ‘em. All hail our feline masters.