Some of the themes I wrote about in my recent contribution to the Pacific Journalism Review on that tired, tedious and irritating bloggers v. journos meme have been starkly illustrated in recent days – in particular the co-optation of the space of blogging and indeed the persona or role of the blogger by big media. As Kim noted, Andrew Bolt, in a “my hits are big, really” misadventure (demonstrating his capacity to ignore evidence that’s drawn to his attention about what statistics actually mean) suddenly became an outsider Insider, or an Insider outsider. Or something.
Andrew Bolt is so proud of his “million page impressions” – take that, lefty journos! – he’s written a column in the mainstream media paper that employs him to write his blog to decry the media and talk up “blogging”. Which is what he does. Not media. Go figure. I imagine he’ll take his outsider message to Insiders on Sunday.
Then we’ve got a panel at the Byron Bay Writers Festival about blogging where the “blogger” doing the discussing is… George Megalogenis. Megalogenis performed the delicate balancing act of answering the highly loaded question are blogs the antithesis of thought? by simultaneously apparently being a blogger and claiming that blogging does destroy the time to think. Oh, and he can only be a good blogger because he’s been a journo for twenty years. Whatever.
It’s enough to make you weep. Or laugh. Something of a corrective to all this might be found in this rather judicious post by shel at Global Neighbourhoods. [Via Stilgherrian]
You are unfair to Mega. After all, “If Obama gives a speech Megalogenis will watch it on Youtube or a web publication rather than reading a transcript in the New York Times.” Finger. Pulse. On.
A 500 word post on your cat can and should be condensed down to a 140 character Tweet or Facebook image to your friends.
I mean most of those blogging folks couldn’t write 500 interesting words anyway. Why clutter up the real blogosphere with that nonsense…….he asks provocatively?
But more seriously, blogging is evolving.
Well at least the every(wo)man blogging we used to know, supplanted by social media tools like Facebook and Twitter.
Blogging is increasingly the preserve of “experts”, that is, bloggers that write in places similar to LP and under the big media mastheads.
This is a good thing I think because it points to a stronger more literate use of the media across a number of fronts.
I have a lot more to say but I’m suddenly bored of the topic and with myself, now where is my smart phone….ooooh, shiny!
Oh yeah, one last thing, journalism is dead too.
Is it useful to draw the distinction between professional and amateur bloggers? Between paid journalists and citizen journalists?
Global Neighbourhoods’ “view that a journalist is not defined by WHERE he or she writes but by WHAT he or she writes. Not everyone who blogs is a journalist. In fact few are. Nor is everyone who writes for traditional media a journalist either” seems more helpful.
We slow thinkers will have to mull that one over for a while.
Blaming Megalogenis for this seems a bit unfair though (except that if he really is all that au fait and kissy with the blogosphere you’d think he’d know more about what’s in it, and have suggested someone more representative of it whom they could invite instead).
The real problem, speaking generally now, is the festival organisers, who are the people who decide what the sessions are going to be about and who is going to be in them. The BB festival committee would also have been responsible for that pathetic and reprehensible loaded question about the ‘antithesis of thought’, a question that only the antithesis of thought could have produced in the first place.
Unfortunately the organisers of most writers’ festivals, even these days, either don’t want to have anything to do with the intertubes at all, or bung in a few token sessions without doing their homework on the topics. Compare this with Adelaide’s annual gay and lesbian arts festival Feast, who are so clued-up that their staff includes (I’m told) a dedicated (in both senses of the word) social networking person, a notion at which old-style arts festival organisers would scoff and snort while simultaneously scratching their heads at Feast’s staggering successes across the board: audience numbers, class acts, good reviews, high-end sponsorship etc etc etc.
Der.
…pathetic and reprehensible loaded question about the ‘antithesis of thought’, a question that only the antithesis of thought could have produced in the first place.
Ha!
also, comparing someone to a blogger has become another standard slag-off tactic for letters to the editor writers, I see.
Ooh, that stings, Leon! (And he wasn’t even referring to Bolta!)
On the issue of climate change – if newspapers turned into printed blogs, they would be far ahead of their current efforts given the quality and amount of blogging being done by people who actually know what they’re talking about in this area.
Yes, I blame the festival organisers too. Hopeless.
I think not. I haven’t much good to say about the majority of journalist in my experience. A cursory read of the papers occassionaly confirms this. It’s simply credentialism and oligopoly conspiring to feed us shite when we could be dining high.
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Most bloggers are crap but then most everything is. You get more stuff from the internet; more diversity, more nuance and more argument . It’s interactive and hence people can challenge you in a way they can’t in the paper.
Relying on journalists to decipher and explain complex scientific issues is fairly dangerous. Journalism students generally aren’t required to do any science courses and I doubt many journos have been following the construction of the Large Hadron Collider with anything more than an “It’s a big project, we have to talk about it” mindset.
Scientists are often those who primarily explain science. There are also teachers, popular science magazines (where people with science backgrounds are paid to write about science) and scientifically literate newspaper journos are at the bottom of the food chain.
Added to that, universities issue all kinds of wacky statements about current research in press releases, playing up some of the accompanying speculation as though it were conclusive. Journalists without scientific training are at the mercy of the PR people.
Hi, I am the BBWF blogger and accepts all brickbats regarding the “pathetic and reprehensible loaded question about the ‘antithesis of thought’ (as described by Pavlov’s Cat). It was entirely my own question drawn from what I heard, and intended to promote discussion. The BBWF committee had nothing to do with my question, or a word written by me. The BBWF blogger was given admission to the festival but wrote the blog on a voluntary basis. I am not on the committee nor party to their discussions.
I would have liked to see a maverick, independent blogger on the panel.
As for journalism standards, yes, it is a subject of lament to me. I have taught into journalism programmes at several universities but predominantly work now as a freelance journalist. A freelancer trying to make a living these days must be able to parachute into a wide range of topics. It’s not how it should be but that’s how it is. There is nothing I would like more than the luxury of resources to research and dig. I took a social sciences degree as I wanted to know a little about some of the topics I would be covering. But as a freelancer no degree could ever cover all the topics. However, there are some reporting skills and standards that apply to everything and which I apply rigidly.
Regarding blogging, it depends, on how you see yourself, and portray yourself. I take all with a grain of salt.
Thanks for this discussion. Now let me have it;-)
Well, BBWFB, you have been so much more polite than I, thus far, that I owe you at the very least a thoughtful reply to make up for that rather intemperate slagging of your question. Ahem.
Unfortunately the question spoke to fights on two fronts that I’ve been mostly losing in literary-community conversations for some time now, so it pushed two of my hot buttons at once. The main one is of course the ‘blogger vs anti-blogger’ one: it sounded to me like the kind of thing that the huge anti-blogging brigade in most cultural-event audiences enjoys sneering and rolling its collective eyes at whenever anyone utters the word ‘blog’ or any of its derivatives onstage. (It’s very similar, for instance, to the way that Private Eye deputy editor Francis Wheen was talking at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas last year, provoking several rounds of cheap sniggering from the audience.) So, naturally, I mistook it for a question written by an anti-blogger. Which in an indirect way, from what you say there, it sort of was — you were quoting ‘what you heard’.
The other less obvious but older issue is that of ‘fostering debate’, a phrase that you don’t, to your great credit, use, but I assume that’s more or less what you mean by ‘promote discussion’. I used to have spirited conversations about this with a certain magazine editor who was forever trying to ‘foster debate’ (my own view is that if it needs ‘fostering’ then it’s a fragile homeless little ‘debate’ to begin with) by framing issues in a clearly adversarial way, and I suppose that’s what bothered me about this one. When a question is framed like this it becomes impossible to discuss except as a dichotomy that quickly degenerates into a bunfight: impossible not to take sides and start barracking, which to me really is the antithesis of thought. And in the case of blogging, the people who react with phrases like that are almost always people who don’t know anything about it. Surely a debate is only interesting when both sides are well-informed?
I suppose I’d just love to see a writers’ festival verbally framing blogging either in a positive way, for once, or otherwise posing value-neutral and content-rich questions. That said, I concede that it’s a lot harder to come up with good ideas for festival sessions than most people who’ve never tried it think it is.
A change of tack perhaps, from journos vs. bloggers to media studies professors vs. bloggers, but I recently read a column in the THES by the estimable Tara Brabazon which laid out many of the familiar allegations against blogging, and then some, and consequently made me very depressed: the more so because the subheading made it seem as though the column was being positive about what blogging can do for writers.
The column’s here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=402966&c=2
The only real rebuttal I could think of that was convincing to me was the usual one about Sturgeon’s Law, and the other usual one about how that writer’s definition of blogging is very different from mine. (I think, reading between the lines, she’s talking about On Line Opinion, which isn’t a blog, and as far as I can tell possesses none of the peer controls on unacceptable behaviour that viable coherent blogs tend to develop.
I once saw Brabazon give a paper at a conference: together with her responses to questions, it was enough to convince me that she really wasn’t somebody I should be paying attention to, no matter what her pay grade was or who she was friends with.
I’m actually surprised at how well written the THES piece is, although once again there is are the ‘teaching as therapy’ and ‘defend former students’ themes. And no, I don’t think she understands what a blog actually is (or can be) as distinct from other online forums. It does seem to be written from a position of, at best, superficial engagement with the form.
Without doubt distinctions have to be made now – in our today’s world – within ‘journalist’ circles about what journalism is. The onus is not on bloggers, which, by invocation of a crude, obtuse, blunt, unattractive, once-non-marketable, yet also free, free-for-all, free-flying, free-living, free-expression, free-timelines, free-thinking, term picks up the slack in today’s MSM journalistic ideals, to publish. And a heap more besides, in favour of the bloggers’spheric command of public space.
Switch the focus. What then of “journalism”? Today?
Only one instance of journalism lives on, today, as entirely pure. That is investigative journalism. While it may be imperfect, and rare, quality investigative journalism is respected across the lot. Vary down the degree of quality, and blogging as once known enters the frame.
That’s not to talk down the available quality of blogging. On the contrary, it is acknowledging our modern world as to include leaked information, wider and deeper analysis from the very people MSM journos have kicked off publication, becoming more and more the domain of blogging.
So, what is journalism?
Opinion? Commentary? Ideas? Consumable any of that? Punditry? How about analysis – and check this, MSM – in-depth analysis (remember that?). Blogs are holding all of that.
Contact lists? “Journalism” beware.
No, the onus now is on “journalism” to define itself.
ps. Those yet-to-be-made distinctions are not solely about MSM “journalism”.
That’s all very well Sam. But the scientists are a bunch of commies. We need to control the news so that people only know what is good for them, for Business and for America.
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That’s what democracy means.
Hello Mark,
Given you weren’t there, how can you be sure I said, or even implied any of the above, or was even the designated “blogger” on the panel?
I could have been answering as a print hack who might have said, for example, that I don’t have time to read every transcript like I once did.
Perhaps I might have been talking about what the web means for reader and journalist alike. Why would one bother with the NY Times account of something Barack Obama says when you could watch the entire speech on your computer?
The bit that amuses me, though, is the idea that the evil empire can’t play on the communal turf of the internet.
Tell me, what part of Meganomics offends the definition of blogging, if such a thing can be defined?
I post, I dump original data on the thing, readers respond, and I reply. And I don’t delegate the moderating to someone else in our organsiation.
Enjoy your site, by the way.
GM
@GM, love your work.
What amuses me Mega is that I can’t play on your turf. Where’s my column? Your newspaper is online so it’s communal too right?
Newspapers used to perform a community (communal) function, though sadly no more, does this mean that the online world is due for a similar fate now that the evil empire is there in force?
By the way, did you ask where the non print independent blogging hacks were so they could speak for themselves on this? From that post Mark linked to there seemed to be a shortage of the folks who actually do independent blogging.
We need to pressure the folks who organise these things to try harder and get actual independent bloggers on the panels, all in the interests of media diversity of course, unless of course the big media guys and those who like to comment on new media issues like to talk the talk but not walk the walk…..which I think is closer to the truth.
GM, thanks for commenting.
It’s quite correct to say that I wasn’t there. In this instance there was no transcript or video, so I’m going on the basis of the blog. Since what I am not trying to do is report the session, but to make a point – which needs to be read in conjunction, as I signal in the post with the other points I’ve made about blogging and particularly the one that I made in the paper to which I’ve linked – I’m not purporting to redact or summarise or whatever. What I am doing is giving a quick reaction which will provoke comment, and which fits into what people know about what I think about these things and what I’ve argued at much greater length etc.
So it’s very far from representing any sort of reportage. And the links are there for people to read for themselves, and there’s a reasonable expectation on my part that they know where I’m coming from, and I’m here to clarify and respond – not as some sort of authoritative author, but as someone who’s continuing to facilitate an ongoing conversation.
There’s also a big signal in the title of the post of weariness with the way the argument’s been framed, and I would anticipate that most people would also understand that the post is written in such a way as to be enact or perform that emotion, rather than to make a complex argument, which is assumed.
That’s blogging! Or part of what blogging is. It’s not journalism, and I’m not a “citizen journalist”.
FWIW, if you search this blog for what I’ve said about your practice before, you’ll note that there’s some praise, and some disagreement with the way that you go about interpreting statistical data, but there’s not an undifferentiated “OMG! A Journo pretending to be a blogger! I hates!” theme.
As to the question you pose about definitions of blogging, I’m trying to hint or gesture at some, but it would take more space than this comments box to really formulate a useful or working one, and for the same reason, I’ll leave aside the “evil empire” remark except to refer back to the comments I’ve made in the linked article and via that article to other posts which are cited about the commercial strategy News Limited has adopted to occupy the space that may otherwise have been taken up by blogs. That’s a matter of public record, from Rupe himself. I’d actually be interested in a conversation about how working journos within News Limited see and understand this, but I’m not sure that conversation can take place in public, though I’d be delighted to have it here if that were the case.
My general point is that I think blogging is about a lot more things than either “citizen journalism” or politics in its narrow sense, and a lot of those things are in fact more of interest to me both as a blogger and as a social scientist.
I do concede a sense of frustration and annoyance with festival organisers and others who convene public discussions and panels deciding to talk about blogging who think it’s appropriate to do so in the absence of any input from bloggers. For a range of reasons, I don’t think what you or most other MSM writes do is blogging, but again let’s leave this aside for the moment. Perhaps you could agree that:
(a) blogging developed and continues independent of the commercial media, and takes in a much broader field of interests, subjects and writing/conversational practices than the media is interested in doing or fostering;
(b) independent bloggers aren’t hide to find;
(c) experts talking about blogging as an object is antithetical to what blogging itself is about.
Glad you like the blog – the feeling wrt your online writing is reciprocated!
Don’t worry Mark,
I wouldn’t have taken the time to comment if I didn’t want to engage in discussion.
Can’t speak for the writers’ festival, Rupe or anyone else, of course.
I can say, though, that journalists writing for the net probably have different motivations to independent bloggers. In that respect, I agree: what we do isn’t blogging as you know it.
For us, our site is a form of talkback for cyberspace, with all the good and ill that that implies. Some readers can be tedious; others tell you things you didn’t know. Often the political parties jam us in the way they once flooded the switchboards of radio stations. They’re easy to spot. The Labor ones begin with “I normally like what you write, but…”. The Coalition version appeals to your independence and tells you that Rudd, not Nelson can only ever be the issue.
But I also find the exchange with readers helps sharpen some of my ideas, and I have had tip-offs which turned into stories for the paper.
I’m off for a week, but shoot me an email to my work address and I’ll give you a call when I get back.
Thanks for the considered to reply to mine,
GM
No probs, GM, and good to chat. Will be in touch.
You may have noticed that I’ve compared the comments left on MSM blog threads several times to a sort of bulletin board or talkback model. What I think it lacks is the community feel which facilitates conversations which go beyond just responses. I think that’s the aspect of it that commercial media – and big media generally because you can see it with the ABC’s efforts at interactivity as well – find very hard to replicate. But I’m sure there’s value in terms of responses to writing for those writers who do seek it and take it seriously, and – leaving the astroturf of the true believers aside – for those who comment as well.
“I can say, though, that journalists writing for the net probably have different motivations to independent bloggers.”
If ‘independent bloggers’ shed or bracket their non-internets (professional) identities when they step into the blogosphere, as they must somehow do if they’re ‘independent bloggers’, then why do journalists retain theirs? Special?
Wel, however it comes to be, it does make me lol.
Essences and appearances? A matter of ontology?
First things first. At Byron Bay I’d have liked to see an independent blogger on the panel alongside, not instead, of George Megalogenis. I think the audience members were not decided one way or the other, they were simply curious, and so it would have been good to widen the perspective. I agree with Mark, George and probably others that the newspaper blogs are not blogging as many of us know it but the ‘evil empire’ does play a fascinating role and there is no reason it should stay off the turf, even if it does sometimes feel like a case of letting the kids into the playground on a limited basis.
On reflection I can see how my headline on the festival blog was interpreted as round 49503 of journalists versus bloggers but it did surprise me as I don’t think in those terms myself. The title of the session was The Power of The Blog: Is Blogging Changing the Face of Journalism?
I have indulged in a few discussions about blogging versus journalism since I started blogging in 2003 and have never understood why people see it as journalism v blogging. It is not so simple. Most surprising to me is that people seem inclined to trust bloggers more than big media whereas I would rather take each item or author on its merits. By mentioning that GM only took on the blog because of his long experience in journalism, I was referring to remark that it was his experience that enabled him to fulfil the commitment he made to the blog, that he does not take the commitment lightly.
I read blogs by ordinary people in America which have helped me to understand why they make they choices they do, and I read the New Yorker. It is not a matter to me of journalism v blogger. As stated in my post, I was not formally reporting the event, but some assumptions were made about me, the organisers, the question, and the panel. Given that I posted to a blog with a facility for commenting, it would have been very easy to put those assumption to me directly but perhaps not as much fun as to assume, react, and to post immediately. I understand that it comes with the territory of blogging. I also see some very fine writers on blogs who do not have access to big media. There is room for all.
One of the reasons I took up blogging as an individual, and unrelated to my then work for the Financial Times, was to have somewhere where I could write for myself without the constraints of journalism, or the need to verify everything.
BTW, I recall Mark being on a panel at BBWF a couple of years ago, and that we spoke about Griffith and probably blogging and journalism education.
“As stated in my post, I was not formally reporting the event,” – bbwf blogger, by “my post” you mean your comment here, yes, not the original post on your own blog? Because from that post, or any of the header / About material on your writers festival blog, there is no way of telling what your affiliation is. So that might be why ‘assumptions were made.’
“By mentioning that GM only took on the blog because of his long experience in journalism, I was referring to remark that it was his experience that enabled him to fulfil the commitment he made to the blog, that he does not take the commitment lightly.”
This interests me. If I heard a paid newspaper ‘blogger’ say this I would immediately call him or her on it as yet another fallacious appeal to irrelevant credentialism. Because there are a lot of bloggers without ‘long experience in journalism’ who display all that regular ongoing daily commitment to their blogs, and a whole lot more, in that they also participate in blog-reading and blog-commenting outside their own singular spaces.
Blogging conceived of and executed as a singular soapbox for the individual voice (as almost all newspaper ‘blogs’ are) is hamstrung in exactly the same way as a Creative Writing course which doesn’t involve a lot of reading. The rare and exceptional individual can make it work, but more usually it’s egotistical, thin and pallid.
Hello Laura,
I think people getting wound up on the wrong thing here.
BBWFBlogger heard me correctly on the question of experience, but you’d need a full transcript to understand the context.
The question from the audience, and my reply, dealt with the daily policy blogging I did during the election campaign.
It wasn’t chest-beating about commitment. Anyone can chain themselves to the computer if they wish. The point I was making, and happy to repeat here, is that I would not have felt qualified to run a daily policy blog during something as important as a federal election if I didn’t have 20 years experience covering politics. Not for a newspaper masthead anyway, especially when my plate was already full writing daily columns for the hard copy edition.
Tell me, how do those without experience in politics even attempt to cover both sides fairly? By this I don’t mean a-pox-on-both-houses blogging, but analysis on the pros and cons of each policy.
It was another way of saying I know my limitations. I wouldn’t have blogged as well a decade ago, and will probably do a better job a decade from now. Translation: I would have been totally useless in 1998, and only next-to-useless ten years from now.
BTW, I did keep an eye on the younger bloggers during the campaign. There are some good ones out there. You’d be surprised how many of them mined my data, and were courteous enough to acknowledge their original source. I, in turn, cited them, so the world does the work the way it is sometimes intended.
It’s a quiet day on my site. Hop on it if you game and tells us what’s wrong with the way we do things. You might be surprised to learn that I have an open mind on the medium, which is why I have posted three times here.
Cheers
GM
“you mean your comment here, yes, not the original post on your own blog? Because from that post, or any of the header / About material on your writers festival blog, there is no way of telling what your affiliation is. So that might be why ‘assumptions were made.’
Hi Laura, as mentioned in first comment here I was given access to the festival but posted the writers festival blog on a voluntary basis at no point being directed on what to post. I also mentioned I have no affiliation to the festival committee, nor am party to their discussions. All of this was not stated in the header but I have always been open to receiving comments. I said in the festival blog that it was not a formal report of the event.
“Because there are a lot of bloggers without ‘long experience in journalism’ who display all that regular ongoing daily commitment to their blogs”
Don’t think anyone is saying otherwise.
Blogging conceived of and executed as a singular soapbox for the individual voice …… The rare and exceptional individual can make it work, but more usually it’s egotistical, thin and pallid”
What criteria determines that it works? What is the measure? Clicks? Getting your point across? Quality of the content? I think GM mentioned in his comment what works about it for him.
For me personally blogging has not been a soapbox but a place to interact, and to experiment and develop other styles of writing with the benefit of completely unpredictable feedback, and completely removed from the day job. So it worked for me. As a commercial proposition, or by any critical standards it would be judge a waste of time. I know bloggers who started barely able to compose a sentence who found their voice through blogging. That works for them. And witnessing that works for me. I love that about blogging.
Apologies – meant to add quotes around this par.
“Blogging conceived of and executed as a singular soapbox for the individual voice …… The rare and exceptional individual can make it work, but more usually it’s egotistical, thin and pallid”
“Unfortunately the question spoke to fights on two fronts that I’ve been mostly losing in literary-community conversations for some time now”
Pavlov’s Cat, I could have taken exception at being mistaken for being anti-blogger but probably didn’t because I am a blogger. Have to say I was curious why or perhaps more so ‘how’ you determine that you are losing these fights in literary community conversations?
And as for ‘fostering debate’, eek no. BTW, I mentioned the title of the session in an earlier comment. It was not anti-blogger. I too have never put together a panel. I think it’s like when writing a feature, you always find the perfect person to interview or the question you should have asked, just after it is has gone to print. Oops, did I just admit that?
“Tell me, how do those without experience in politics even attempt to cover both sides fairly?”
Is ‘covering both sides’ the only proper way to think about politics, even in the run-up to an election?
We also need to establish what counts as ‘experience in politics’. The drift of your comments here suggests a narrowly professional background – it seems to rule out being a novel-reader, for instance.
Just taking this opportunity to wish GM the best; whose work, for mine, a certain read – quite rare FW that is worth.
Another, Sean C., once responded to the question of quality political commentary along the lines of “I don’t take myself too seriously”, which I don’t want taken out of context here, as it was given freely and in good faith, and bespoke of quite much more than the quote immediately suggests, which I feel runs along the lines of what GM is saying in part above. A quote below questions this in part.
Maybe this is a bit too nuanced to be of value, or just me, tho to table it all the same: I do think blogging can be regarded as “too serious”, that is, that bloggers take themselves too seriously. I think that is a perception simmering within MSM counterparts (in that they comment on the same things, for publication), among bloggers and commenters and probably non-contributing readers as well. But I think some of this is a misreading, when in fact also bloggers are actually de-cynicising the process of commentary. That is, from a MSM perspective, where one could imagine cynicism wakes up with you each morning, the bloggers’ “taking yourself too seriously” thing, if that registers at all, can and has been misread.
I’m not talking about cynicism per se, existing across the board for politics. I’m talking about the approach in writing – the reason to want to write, those driving forces, that need; a belief.
I would like to ask GM if a certain freshness is enjoyed in blogs, notwithstanding their and our contributing failings, regarding political writing.
Here’s a quote to consider all round:
The thought arises from this – perhaps also to be included in the question of “what is Journalism today” – is what to GM is blogging?
My two bobs from a non-blogger reader and contributor perspective is that blogging can take any form it likes, with a pre-determinant being a self-belief. Even though the content may suggest or speak of uncertainties, the act of self-publishing is an act of belief – of non-cynicism. And blogging need not include an availability for that reading public to respond: comments can be turned off.
It appears from GM’s response, above, and this is given with genuine appreciation for GM’s work, that blogging is regarded quite differently from the bloggers themselves. This is not a criticism, merely an observation or takeout from a comment. In dealing with blog commentary, should that have been a reason for my misappropriation of GM’s thoughts in this regard, it’s a worthy consideration to enjoy this process whereby questions, poorly or well placed, or thoughts, similarly so, can be more deeply and widely tendered.
Quickly, I think one of the difficult areas in this topic is an understanding of the different cultures involved: blogging and MSM. We might pretend to be sympathetic one for the other, but I expect one precludes – until and for now – such sympathy for the other. What this thread is doing is testing the walls between the two, opening doors – all appreciated, always – so one might better understand the other. And as always, similarities can be found, if one is positive of mind, more abundantly than differences or points of conflict.
Super-lastly, we are into a passage of change of course, and “journalism” and “blogging” (and YouTube and MySpace and much more) are redefining ways we interact. “Politics” presenting and responding, itself, has been ripped apart, notwithstanding its commentary. For a couple of bobs, a reassessment of what is “blogging” and what is “journalism” would go a long way to not only assist readership, but quality or type of content towards that.
GM’s contributions here on that account I’m sure are roundly (and I hope, freshly,) appreciated.
Robert, I’ve edited your comment as requested.
Thanks Kim. [For the record of course, that was to remove accidental duplication, and apologies and thanks so much for that correction.] That said, it’s quite an interesting quote – to regard one’s blogging prowess neither a decade ago or hence as rather unchanging, and seemingly not so good all round.
I can understand the self-effacement, but what is missing here?
Well, from where I sit, Robert, I think Laura’s question hits the mark. The comments about “experience” only make sense if the “blogging” GM does is seen as an extension of his profession. It’s like he’s talking about where he is now in terms of his professional development. It seems to pose a false opposition (maybe that’s not his intention, but I think it’s just the logic of what he’s saying) between professionalism and amateurism which is totally wrong – but which arises because there’s an assumption that bloggers and journos are doing the same thing. They’re not. Journos are doing journalism and bloggers are blogging. That rather simple fact is why so much of the bloggers v. journo thing is crapola – it’s based on a category mistake.
It also ignores the fact that all sorts of experience goes into and backgrounds blogging. People might know heaps about literature, or economics, or knitting, or feminist analysis, or sport, or … whatever. Even politics. But writing about it on a blog is an avocation, and there are heaps of times when people are posting stuff that isn’t some sort of “argument” or “analysis” or argument – it’s a much freer form of writing than journalism or commentary even if it does have its own rules. And to the degree that it informs and stimulates, it doesn’t need to follow anyone else’s rules – for instance being “comprehensive” or “balanced” or “two-sided” etc when writing about politics (ref. again what Laura said).
The relation between writing and response is also different because it’s not really a response to writing at all, but different levels at which a stack of interesting intelligent people are just having a chat.
The post Mark mentions, by Shel in Global Neighbourhoods is spot on.
I think GM’s comments about experience were not about professional development or professionalism v amateurism. I think he was giving context and describing his own situation.
Cheers
BBWfB
Good morning Kim, Robert and Laura.
Yep, it is as a journalist that I write for The Australian online. It can’t be any other way, unfortunately.
Kim, don’t worry I wasn’t making some phony observation about the supposed distinction between professional and amateur. But you are right, I view what I do on the net, in part, as professional development for me.
My election policy blog (and I stick to that term in this instance, even though we all agree that what I do is journalism, not blogging) would have been a farce if I had less experience as a journalist. Why, to borrow a Ruddism? One reason among many, is because I would not have had the patience to write quickly, and calmly, in response to readers.
Some readers can be cranky. Like most human beings, they have an over-active niggle gene. The niggle gene is a good thing for a journalist to have because he/she can aim it at those in power. But it doesn’t work when engaging in a two-way dialogue with readers.
When I say a decade ago I would have been useless, I feared I would have treated some readers in the same way as politicians, as targets deserving of my razor wit(lessness).
I may still react more curtly than I should to some readers, hence the notion that I am only a little more advanced today.
The thing I most enjoy about the web is learning something from someone I initially disagreed with. As a journalist, I will get challenged in ways that bloggers won’t. There are so many assumptions operating in a newspaper reader’s mind that I can’t begin to untangle. But when readers hop on to my fraction of the internet, I want to learn how to give each one the benefit of the doubt. When they begin their post with “you moron”, I try to engage without taking it personally. If they don’t give me the benefit of the doubt in return, they cede the right for an on-going conversation. Their stuff will still go on the site, but they can’t expect me to be their punching bag.
This is not meant to sound arrogant. It is, as its most basic level, an issue of time-management and sanity. Some people get their rocks off trading typed abuse with people they have never meant and will never meet. I’m not one of them. Colleagues who leave the moderating of their columns to others are probably being wise. Trust me, I’ve seen the crap that people send in. It would do your head in if you took it literally.
This isn’t a concern in the same way for the blogging community. You can self-select your audience a lot quicker than we do. The people who come to your site come in good faith; like minds so to speak. There is no sense that you are an authority figure to be challenged, so your conversations can go in many more directions.
As Robert notes:
“One of the difficult areas in this topic is an understanding of the different cultures involved: blogging and MSM. We might pretend to be sympathetic one for the other, but I expect one precludes – until and for now – such sympathy for the other.”
True, up to a point. Perhaps the defensiveness at both ends stems from the following: The MSM perceives that many blogs operate on the premise of re-writing content generated by the MSM. (I am not speaking as me here, but giving you a take on perceptions). The MSM sees there is an audience for this dialogue, but can’t be sure how to measure if it is real. It sees, too, that some bloggers are seriously good writers and makes them an offer. The MSM also thinks ‘why let the bloggers pollute out copy’. ‘Why don’t we go online and pull their readers over to our sites.’ The bloggers say ‘get off our turf, what you are doing is journalism, not blogging’. As I say, all true, up to a point.
But the competion, and the conversation can’t be bad for either party. All that can happen from here on is innovation, and a better understanding.
GM
PS Meganomics has been dead-quiet for the past 24 hours. Perhaps we have the same reader, and they had the sense to see I was doing my tying here. Thanks again for the time.
It’s the entire intertubes, that unimportant sporting event in China may have something to do with it. First the smog now this, dammed Chinese!
George, I am enjoying reading your comments. I understand that you are speaking of your own experience and thoughts about it, as is proper. But if we were to try to extend what you’re saying to give it general application, I would vigorously challenge that.
I agree with you that the kinds of writing skills and psychological qualities you identified can make for good, rewarding blogging. But they can be acquired in so many different fields and through many different experiences. I wouldn’t accept that working in journalism necessarily inculcates more patience and a thicker skin than being a teacher, say, or a bhuddist, or a middle child. But then I don’t think you would argue so generally.
That’s interesting, GM.
Perhaps part of the skill and experience bloggers have is precisely interaction on the nets. That’s not really a “professional” skill as such – but it’s interesting to note that in some senses it – or at least social interaction – is increasingly being recognised as one – in part prompted by attempts historically to demonstrate the value of “attributes” women often bring to the workplace being revalued as “skills”. There’s another whole story about emotional labour to be told, here, I think, and also one about a blurring of and expansion of skills proper to particular professions – in this case journalism. Because blogs pioneered what is now being incorporated into the expectations of “media work” (on which see Mark Deuze’s excellent book of the same title) and that may also explain some resistances.
I’d also point out that many bloggers are professionals of various sorts when wearing other hats than that of blogger.
There may also be a dynamic feeding the “bloggers v. journos” debate from the late reconceptualisation of journalism as a profession and all its own tensions with what’s represented by terms like “craft”, “trade” and so on – and the angst in some circles about “media studies” courses at uni and the appropriateness or otherwise of teaching journalism.
All this would need more analysis, and like Laura, I’m referring not to you specifically but to the whole thing.
Tabling, to the side, an acknowledgement while the above comments carry through, speaking if I may rather presumptuously on behalf of silent readers..
Whenever MSM writers step across the (illusionary?) void to comment on blogs, those writers are treated with respect – though challenged. Secondly, that input is enjoyed. Thirdly, it doesn’t seem to negatively affect professional work. Finally, it does us all the world of good.
Cheers, GM, and a lovely Sunday evening to you, in the company of good minds and fair hearts.
I’ve just noticed your swipe at my talk in Adelaide last year. You say that I provoked “cheap sniggering”, which doesn’t bother me much: better than expensive sniggering, surely, as at least it saved them some money. What puzzles me is your implication that I was virulently (and indeed cheaply) anti-blog. I hope I wasn’t. The best blogs (as I think I said) are very good indeed, and (as you say) better than much “official” journalism. What I did say, and do believe, is that blogging ain’t enough. Reporting and newsgathering require an invstment of time and money and resources that aren’t available in the blogosphere. Well, we can argue about time — no doubt some bloggers have unlimited quantities of it — but you know what I mean. The pursuit of some journalistic investigations requires a serious commitment by a news organisation, and this is rarer and rarer today as media owners do their cost-benefit analyses and decide that they can sell lots of copies rather more cheaply (that word again!) with stunts and gimmickry and recycled showbiz scuttlebut, and so needn’t bother with the trickier and less glamorous business of doggedly chasing down miscarriages of justice or corporate misdeeds that may well involve lengthy lawsuits and months of hard work. Blogs are fine, but they have their limits. That was all I meant to say. Sorry if I didn’t make it clearer. Must have been the jetlag.
best wishes,
Francis Wheen
Wow. I think that’s what they mean by the ‘long tail’. Or possibly it’s a long arm.
It’s good to hear that you don’t hold blogs in as much contempt as you seemed to, and I agree that the sniggerers are at least as much to blame — and also that people who think blogs are a substitute for old-style journalism are living in a fool’s paradise. (I think there are fewer of these than there used to be.)
It’s not linked to in my comment here, but in another post on the Festival of Ideas on my own blog I think I very appreciatively told the story (which wiped out any residual negativity I may have been feeling) about you crossing the street on your way to the festival venue, realising someone was shouting angrily at you out of a truck, and having it dawn on you by slow degrees that the truck driver had mistaken you for John Howard.
There are a few of us who don’t hold blogs in such comtempt as we seemed to.
The long arm indeed! Francis Wheen spoke at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival a couple of years back and now I’m the owner of a large collection of Richard Thompson’s music and have seen a concert.
George M, I have a career move, suggestion, that will make you a blogging hero. And bucketloads of money. Even if it means you will need to move offshore.
Everybody would be thrilled to know the dirt on the great orstalyan, media, groupthink.
A book by an insider is really needed. I suspect you are one of the very few, capable, of making it interesting and honest.