Larvatus Prodeo

I wasn’t the only person to notice on Friday night that Possum, The Poll Bludger and Andrew Bartlett (among others) popped up on a new blog platform at Crikey. One take on this move from Duncan Reilly – writing at The Inquisitr – was that it constitutes “a welcomed step in legitimizing blogging in Australia”. From my point of view, that’s the wrong way round. I very much doubt that any of those bloggers lacked “legitimacy” – Possum’s performance in outgunning the GG crew in the pseph analysis stakes, The Poll Bludger’s hosting of a rolling psephological conversation and the quality of the informational and analytical blogging he does and Andrew Bartlett’s commitment to a transparent and open political debate all have that quality in spades already.

I think what’s more significant here is a recognition from Crikey of a shift from a relatively static form of internet publishing to a more dynamic and interactive one. It’s a better model in some ways than cherry picking bloggers to write static articles, because it encompasses the whole context of the form.

There’s obviously also a commercial element in the decision – frequently updated sites with lively and long comments threads multiply the page views and thus the advertising revenue. And, as with the general trend towards blog networks, it should be possible for Possum and the rest of the mob to earn a modest living from what they do without all the hassles of being their own advertising agent, and to concentrate on the content and the community without being their own tech support. What will be interesting is the degree to which there’ll be a crossover from Crikey “readers” to Crikey blog participants/commenters.

What does this imply for the independent blogosphere? Continue reading ‘Crikey goes bloggy’