Nice work from Nicholas Gruen on Radio National talking to Geraldine Doogue about blogging. Though I’m not sure if Geraldine gets it – “the era of online diaries or weblogging is upon usâ€?… and assuming that 150 visits to a blog a day is a high level of traffic. And RN could do a better job with their online content – it would be much easier to post smaller audio files labelled with the subject rather than have to fast forward without too much guidance as to where the story you’re interested can be found. In this instance, it’s in the second hour and the window that my browser opened didn’t even give me the facility to find a particular story by referring to how many minutes along it was. [Update: Via a commenter at Troppo, a simpler way to find the interview online.] It would also be nice to have some links to the blogs Nick, and the other guest, Julie Shiels, referred to to make consulting them easier for the listeners.
Incidentally, on the question of whether blogs will replace newspapers over breakfast, I usually don’t eat breakfast so I have my morning cup of coffee in front of the computer screen and I look at blogs via Google Reader before I look at any of the newspapers’ websites. The only dead tree papers I buy now are the Fin and the Wednesday Australian for the Higher Ed and/or the ALR, and solely because the content isn’t online. I think a lot of media research shows that this sort of news consumption and interaction isn’t at all unusual for Gen X and Gen Y folks.
I’m a boomer and I don’t read the papers anymore preferring online delivery for all my media.
MSM gets scanned for items of interest and blogs get read for information and opinion.
And yes, coffee and and Google reader is my AM habit as well.
Thanks, Phil, btw, for giving me the google reader habit! I’m trying to persuade my bloglines friends to make the switch too.
Actually a friend and I were discussing the whole question of blog reading over dinner last night. She’s very interested in sewing, and gets information on fabric sales in Brisbane from an American blog with a very large Australian commenter base rather than from ads in the papers here… and she also commented that without the feminist blogosphere, you’d get the impression that the media want to give – that feminism is dead.
I’ve also stopped buying newspapers and read the news online instead. (Not over breakfast – too busy organising the day and supervising the child to do that.)
I don’t buy the newspapers so much either, though, truth be told all the newspapers here in English cost a small fortune. Like Mark, I use Google Reader to compile all the bloggy stuff I read and the I get all the news from Google news and the newspaper websites.
I was in London last week and it was pretty cool to be able to pick up any number of my favourite newspapers in their print version to read on the tube for a change!
I still buy newspapers for public transport. There’s not enough scribble room on a mobile phone to work on the clues for the cryptic.
I’ll add another vote for google reader over breakfast.
The crushed tree version I buy on Saturdays for weekly therapy of sitting in a cafe to read whilst having brunch.
It’s sad but we both read rss feeds over breakfast – laptops on opposite sides of the table.
Why’s it sad, though? Would it be less sad if you were reading paper newspapers? I was talking about this aspect to my friend last night as well and we decided that spending, say, three hours one night reading and interacting on blogs is a lot more worthwhile than slumping in front of free to air teev.
I dunno why it’s sad, Mark. But it is firmly posited within my abode – and without embarrassment – that I am a sad person if I ever hump the laptop to the kitchen table. Newspapers are socially acceptable. However I do see that this will change.
(There’s something about the physical contortions you can put a newspaper thru that allow one to pretend a certain domestic devotion that the billboard strain of a PC screen still prohibits.)
But speaking of radio – now there’s a medium. Mornings would not really be morning without the ABC filling the aural spaces of ablative weekday motion to the door.
Yes Mark, it is much sadder than reading newspapers, because at least with a newspaper there’s a 50% chance you’ll lay it flat on the table and look up occasionally at the person opposite you. With laptops the screen part forms a little fence down the middle of the breakfast table. Newspapers you tend to trade sections, also.
When I read and comment on blogs, my mind is elsewhere, off in cyberspace somewhere. When I read a book or newspaper or something similar I’m much less removed from my physical surroundings.
Of course, right now D & me are both sitting on the couch writing things on blogs. Sometimes we IM each other.
See? Social interaction, just a bit intermediated!
Mind you, I’ve got into trouble myself with one friend of mine by arguing that IM-ing isn’t the same as catching up and chatting…
And Mark, I think you’re being a bit hard on Geraldine Doogue – I’ve already said so here http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/06/23/saturday-salon-104/#comment-379182 . 150 visitors a day is nothing to be ashamed of – I only have about 70 a day, most of whom are looking for pictures of Slavoj Zizek.
Fair enough, Laura. She’s certainly not as bad as some – ie Trioli.
Why do people want to see pictures of Zizek? I guess that’s an imponderable along the Missy Higgins lesbian lines…
Yes it’s a mystery to me, I can’t imagine that if they know to do searches about him that they don’t already know perfectly well what he looks like.
Yep, and if they’re that interested, you’d think they could buy one of his books for the dust jacket photo… and even perhaps words as well as pictures.
He always does pose for photos, I’ve noticed, as a sort of rakish intellectual type.
Thanks, Phil, for reminding the chromosomally-named generations that they don’t own the interthingies.
This boomer consumes a bowl of weetbix with soy milk in front of the computer, and picks up a coffee on the way to work. The aggregator is Netvibes, though the huge amount of bandwidth it uses is attracting the evil eye of my employer’s network manager, so I think I’ll take the advice and see if Google Reader makes a difference at work.
I haven’t been able to wean myself off Monday’s (Doug Anderson’s reviews in the TV program) and Saturday’s Herald.
The ABC’s changes to the news site are very impressive, particularly the tagging, and the ability to set up your own tags on the main page. Quite possibly, they’re working on implementing Mark’s suggestions right now.
By day I consume MSM, but when it gets dark I’m mostly reading online.
I’m a traditional newspaper reader in the morning – SMH gets delivered and I read it over breakfast while listening to RN. I get to then end of the paper which means I have to get ready and go to work at that point. The blogosphere never ends – if I turned on the computer in the morning I reckon I’d never leave the house!
Then I read the Tele on the train to work so I pick up a bit of gratuitous outrage and try to flick through the Oz and AFR over lunch – because they are there and I can.
Must do something with all this information one day
Thanks to my trusty electric razor, the day begins with a shave and a read of the feeds on My.Yahoo (don’t need a mirror any more, after all these years I pretty much know where my face is).
I still buy the SMH for features more than news, but have basically stopped watching TV news (most days the ABC just reads the SMH main stories anyway).
[Update: Via a commenter at Troppo, a simpler way to find the interview online.]
I just came across this quote from the Unapologetic Mexican, via Pandagon. I love it!
wbb said:
i’m not surprised that I’m not surprised.
Another one here who gets all news online – I no longer read the ‘real’ hardcopy thing (and my fave is the Guardian anyway – costs too much to buy here in Australia!) Rarely even watch TV news – it’s just ABC RN or Newsradio and the interweb for this household. That said, I get to read my online news at work.
However – do we really think our reading is more broad than the old MSM? Could it just be that we stick to our niches even more when we have speciality ‘press’ that caters to our own prejudices? I have ended up leaving more than one blog I loved when I found out (usually through a commenter) that they got their facts wrong, or at very least spun them mercilessly.
I do not buy Australian newspapers.
I save my five and ten cent pieces for The Economist, The Atlantic, Harpers, Daedelus, Private Eye, the Spectaor, Viz, MAD, English Vogue, and Tatler.
Re – English publications. Bring back THE FACE! Is it no longer published in the UK, or has it just been not imported by Oz newsagents for some years?
Mark
My dear, you really need to check your birth certificate before buying such retro print Bibles. What is the magazine equivalent of “mutton dressed up as lamb?”
There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also.