Last week, I noted the sad end of the Road to Surfdom and mused about the future of independent online media. While some things come to an end, other things begin, and I thought it would be a useful postscript to note both the expansion of Overland’s web presence and a new initiative from the folks at Australian Policy Online, Inside Story. Both are very worthwhile additions to the online discussion of public affairs in Australia.
It’s been noted before in comments here at LP, but continuing the Tim Dunlop theme, it’s also worth highlighting the initiative of commenters at the former Blogocracy in establishing Blogocrats. It’s a very powerful reminder of the importance of community in the blogosphere and online media more generally.
Blogocrats is weird in that the person or people who writes/write the posts doesn’t have a name. To me that makes it extremely generic and bland, and I don’t get any sense of the person or people behind the blog, as I do with…well, every other group blog I read, and I read quite a few. I can say this is the ONLY blog I’ve found which doesn’t bother to identify the writer, even pseudonymously.
Thinking about it, it shouldn’t make a difference, but it does. It’s strangely voiceless.
Helen,
The authors at blogocrats are mostly me and joni, with occasional posts from John McPhilbin and TB Queensland, oh and Kevin Rennie too..
We’re listed on the site as “authors”. However naturally if you would like to know who has written a particular post, you need only ask..
Also, we’re opening the site to “everyone” to submit posts for discussion, so I guess it is different from other sites that may have one single author or “voice”.
Cheers
reb
Yours truly excepted. I’ll suggest it to the anons.
Helen is as right as can be. Authorship in blog publishing isn’t just an important thing, it’s the only thing.
Mark, I’ve been giving a fair bit of thought to your post from last week and the nature of online community and audience in Australia. When you note as you’ve done here that community is important in blogging, it’s true—but there is a power aspect. The community interaction at the level of authorship on LP is close to nil, and that’s as it should be. The idea of the blog being run by the community of the comments field (ie. by people like me) is horrifying. I’m sceptical, I’m afraid, of the Dunlop-free efforts of the Blogocrats mob, because the thing that made Blogocracy what it was was Tim Dunlop. This is not to say that comments field contributions are worthless, but value in comments is a function of the author. (On that note, can I repeat my request to have Derrida Derider put on as a guest poster at someone’s blog somewhere? Ta.)
There did exist a sense of community amongst Australian bloggers some years ago, evident in the now almost disappeared habit of many bloggers riffing off each others’ posts; but for various reasons it’s a more restrained, atomised blogosphere now. It was a community of authorship. My own view is that the many authors of the Big Three Australian blogs, LP, Club Troppo and Catallaxy, have moved far apart enough politically (and how can I put this—culturally) that their authors no longer have anything to say to each other. I suppose there’s also that blogs are much easier to work now than three years ago, and there’s no longer a small, elitish group of people informed about each other. The feminist blogs in my feed reader still seem to have that sense of interlinked authorship across sites, but even then it’s largely confined to a feminist sphere. Whatever it is, it’s too bad.
In any case, let me urge you to follow your advice about the importance of community in online media, and ignore anything you read in a comments field.
Keep authoring.
Following on from Helen’s suggestion, I’m pleased to advise that the punters over at blogocrats are now going to sign their posts to make identification of the writer easier..
thanks for the ‘heads up’ helen…
Cheers Stuntreb – there’s no need to give out your real identity – Giblets, Fafnir and the Medium Lobster are the most loved group bloggers on the internet, and I suspect they’re not their real names.
Sort of OT but a couple of blog related questions
1) Is there a name for morons who post non-comments on multiple old threads (noticed you’ve got one today)?
2) Any theories of what they think they are achieving or what ‘pleasure’ they get from it?
You mean Medium Lobster isn’t their real name….?????!!!!!
“Authorship in blog publishing isn’t just an important thing, it’s the only thing.”
Liam, I hope you’re only talking about Australia. If not I suggest reading Antony Loewenstein’s The Blogging Revolution. For many in the global blogoshere, anonymity is life or death.
I’m for using your own name but each to her own.
PS Blogocrats is blogging evolution – who knows where…
You mean Bert Nuts isn’t his/her real name?
That’s not what I meant, Kevin. I’m highly in favour of pseudonymity, the more creative the handle the better.
Pollytickedoff, I believe they were spam bots.
But what are they spamming? Its just a number sequence.
Has spam suddenly gone all ‘Space Oddysey’ on us, and won’t tout products (for Dave) anymore?
Zen spam.
It’s about the journey, not the destination, maaaan.
bjshy34onm1, maaaaan.
I spam, therefore I am.
Catallaxy is one ‘of the Big Three Australian blogs’? Well I think we might have uncovered a major problem right there ….
If not I suggest reading Antony Loewenstein’s The Blogging Revolution.
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Indeed another excellent example of an important topic driven into the dirt by an utter mediocrity. He’s characterisation of Middle-East bloggers was apparatchnik bollocks. He’s Australia’s John Ralston Saul that guy. He writes books that need to be written and fucks it up.
Lefty E, those spambot “comments’ are something to do with SEO or search engine optimisation – an “industry” whose practicioners should all be thrown into a pit of rotting manure.
Adrien
I take it you’ve read The Blogging Revolution then. Which chapters or parts didn’t you like? Why not? Specifics would help.
I take it you’ve read The Blogging Revolution then.
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I haven’t read the whole thing. I read My Israel Question which I thought was a really good idea for a book. Like Voltaire’s Bastards the execution was disappointing. The Blogging Revolution appears to suffer from the same sloppiness.
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For example Lowenstein describes the Rantings of a Sandmonkey as neoconservative blog. This is inaccurate.
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If you read Sandmonkey as I do from time to time it’s pretty clear he’s a libertarian. There’s quite a lot of difference between a neocon and a libertarian. That said Sandmonkey is a young son of the Egyptian elite who is American educated. He takes strong exception to the nepotistic police state in which he lives even tho’ quite privileged within it.
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Whereas a Neocon is a Western advocate of a strong evangelism of traditional values Sandmonkey is opposing these values at home. In fact Neocon doesn’t make sense in the Middle East because there’s been no social revolution analogous to that in the West beginning with the ’60s. Lowenstein simply quotes the glib burb on Sandmonkey’s blob. He hasn’t bothered to read it, to think about the application of Western political categories to Mid-East ideology or to consider that not everyone who supported the Iraq War can be described as a Neocon.
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There’s no mention of Onearabworld which is by a left-wing, anti-terrorist Palestinian in Egypt who, whilst advocating his peoples’ right, categorically opposes anti-Semitism.
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If you read these guys whop identify with different sides of the Western ideological spectrum you’ll find they have many things in common. The frustration with Egyptian bureaucracy for example. The rejection of ludicrous religion. La la la. I didn’t go into his book in depth because I have little time for sloppiness and my examination of it revealed that, like My Israel Question, this book to was sloppy.
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I’ll have another look at it tho’. Like I say, good idea for a book. The Mid East blogosphere is fascinating ’cause it’s where the internet reaches it’s real potential.
Kevin Rennie – I take it you’ve read The Blogging Revolution then.
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As I said – no. I read the intro and a random chapter when trying decide whether a polemical book’s worth buying. Usually not.
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But I went back and read another chapter of The Blogging Revolution to be fair. I’d read the chapter on Egypt ’cause I used to live there and visit the blogs occassionly. I read the chapter on Iran.
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It’s just like the one on Egypt. Only worse. Like that chapter the Iran chapter takes up half its space with a cursory and not-too-insightful run-down of the context interspersed with the inevitable distaste that we in the new world have for the filthy urbane environs of a Mid-East city. These are not particularly illustrative and lack either the deft analysis of Chris Hitchens or the provocational (and intentionally chauvaunistic) humour of PJ O’Rourke. Needless to say he writes not as well as either of these chaps. And he begins a nauseating number of sentences with the phrase ‘It is’, or its conjunction. I found it dead prose.
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The rest hardly touches on blogging really. A lot of it’s soundbytes from books and TV. And then there’s the uninspiring contact-with-the-locals anecdotes. In the beginning Lowenstein makes the extraordinary declaration that:
p21
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Now Iran is misunderstood. I don’t think it even understands itself really. But North Korea? What’s to understand? China, Japan, Russia, several African nations, France even – are much better candidates than N Korea for misunderstanding. The information from the land of Kim Jong-il is entirely consistent in its portrayal of a failing Stalinist state. Iran doesn’t compare. Lowenstein’s perfectly entitled to make this statement but he doesn’t back it up at all. We’re just supposed to take his word for it.
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Lowenstein correctly points out the impact of the CIA-led removal of Mossadegh in 1953. He likewise is correct in stating that the 1979 revolution was not entirely inspired by Islamist ideology. However, and this impacts negatively on his elucidation of the Egyptian situation, he doesn’t care to explain how a relatively modern country with a strong middle-class came to be a Theocracy. Nor does he understand that the theocratic elements are one tier amongst three of Iranian authority. The others being the government and the military.
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One thing that was interesting is that he visited a Jewish community in Tehran. Iran, as he points out, has the largest ME Jewish diaspora outside Israel. He doesn’t however explore the contradictions between this phenomena and the fact that Protocols of the Elders of Zion is read widely even by determinedly secular people. He gets asked by some such whether he, as a Jew, find it easy to get work in America (because they’re in control don’t you know). He denies this a little too flatly I thought. Backing off My Israel Question perchance?
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When he introduces the section on his interaction with Iranian Jews he begins with something especially sloppy:
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There are no quotes around ‘Mohammed’ nor is there a note telling us it’s not his real name. Mr Lowenstein has been accused by such as Andrew Bolt of being a somewhat, ahem, unethical journalist. I can only s’pose Lowenstein’s pleased to feed the troll. For some reason there’s a footnote attached to the (yet another) banal notation of the goatee. When you flip to it, it tells you that this anecdote about meeting Mohammed in a cafe is sourced from a meeting Lowenstein had with Mohammed in a cafe!
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Thanks for that Tony. Just in case I missed it the first time.
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It’s interesting to note that he begins by telling us that this happened ‘while he was in Iran’. The section appears well into the chapter on Iran, we’re already well-used to his being there and he hasn’t told us he’s left. Again what for? The fact that Mohammed has nothing to do with the Jewish diaspora makes it somewhat mysterious that he’s there introducing the section. I s’pose Lowenstein’s gotta drop in a blogger every now and then. After all he hardly refers to them.
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He’s a disciple of Pilger and Chomsky. Like them however there’s no real appreciation of the realpolitik realities. I don’t fault Pilger for this, his task is to tell stories other journalists don’t and he tends to succeed. Chomsky is an unabashed idealist who appears to simply believe that Utopia is possible simply by an effort of will.
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The contradictions between America’s stated values and its foreign policy are well established themes of historical scholarship. If Lowenstein wants to follow the path blazed by Pilger he’d do well to have a look at the work of Charles Beard or WA Williams. Andrew Bacevich even. But no. He’s John Pilger without the rigour, the powerful interviewing technique or the previously uncovered information. All he’s got is the radical posture and and the travel perks. Most of the book is basic stuff one could write better from a desk in Australia. The local encounters are insubstantial, the analysis doesn’t exist, the understanding of blogs is minimal and he doesn’t even write well.
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He’s a wanker.