Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
Today is LP’s fourth birthday!
So if you’re feeling in a nostalgic mood, or if you weren’t around way back when, you can check out the first two posts or have a look at a snapshot of where we were and what the place looked like on 21 February 2006, the first point at which the National Library’s Pandora archived us.
Skepticlawyer reports on the incorporation of various interlinked Blair/Bolt watch blogs into Crikey’s blog network [Crikey story here]. Tim Blair seems to have taken the bait Pure Poison laid for him.
Skepticlawyer comments:
One entirely legitimate attack that the MSM directs at the blogosphere is based on the latter’s pettiness and nastiness. Of course, they use a broad brush, and all of us are tarred. Sure, Crikey doesn’t quite count as MSM, occupying an interesting liminal space, but I’m not sure that facilitating this aspect of the blogosphere is the way for any media organisation to go. It may be one day, but not with this group of writers.
That’s an interesting point, though the MSM attack on the blogosphere is so predictable it hardly matters if it’s justified [and I won't comment on the merits of the various Grodscorp etc. blogs as they're not among my regular reading]. I will say that I think there is some public purpose served by attacking Bolt’s egregious twisting of the facts and logical black holes – because he’s so prominent as a climate change denier. I’m not so sure about Tim Blair. He seems to me to be stuck in something of a blogging timewarp – invent formula circa 2002, stick to it. What strikes me about Tim’s blogging is how little it engages with the Australian political debate. Bolt may claim to have a million hits a month or whatevs (and incidentally, on Bolt’s misleading measure – remembering a million “hits” doesn’t equate to readers, we were at 1049199 pages served in January). I’m puzzled, though, as to how many Daily Telegraph readers are interested in catfights between Blair and “lefty” bloggers and other minor public figures.
Continue reading ‘Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt vs. Crikey: Upscaling the blog wars or big yawn?’
In comments on the post here at LP about John Quiggin’s piece on the “picking up the phone” distinction some have made between journos and bloggers, Jack Strocchi asked:
When have news journos derived their copy off bloggers?
Some people think that the answer is… quite often. I’m with them. Consider this passage here at LP – posted by Mark on Saturday, about the negotiating stances of the government and The Greens and Steve Fielding on the stimulus package’s Senate passage:
I suspect that this manoeuvring might factor more into what comes out of the Budget sausage machine. The government has clearly been shifting its rhetoric on the unemployed, and I would expect the minors to be told that people on benefits will benefit as a result of the Henry Review. So it may be that some commitments might be made for future measures in exchange for current support. That would still, however, give the minor party Senators a real chance to shape the response to the economic downturn.
Then consider this from Michelle Grattan on the same topic, posted on the SMH website last night:
I feel like I’m flogging a dead horse here a little, but there are still some interesting posts being written on some of the issues arising out of Katherine Wilson’s hoaxing of Quadrant [see past LP posts here]. Most of the focus is now on the role of the blogosphere in revealing her identity, as Don Arthur at Troppo reacts to Jason Wilson’s claims of unethical behaviour at Gatewatching [here, here and Wilson's response to Arthur is here]. Meanwhile, more positively, Legal Eagle discusses why she thinks blogging is different from journalism, and some of the overlaps, and Margaret Simons reflects further on some of the issues.
A salient point in reply to Wilson’s claims about the obligations of bloggers regarding fact-checking might be synthesised from Legal Eagle’s post and a comment on Simons’ thread from Mediamook. Continue reading ‘Wilson/Windschuttle Quadrant hoax: the links continue!’
At Ambit Gambit, Graham Young riffs off a comment made by Jay Rosen on Twitter:
You know why there are bloggers, @Newshour? Because there is “safety first” reasoning in news. People get sick of it and take up their pens.”
Young doesn’t entirely agree – not that the performance of the media in reportage isn’t a jumping off point for the desire to blog – but that the problem with mainstream journalism is “safety first”. He presents three hypotheses which might explain the quality of political reporting and commentary. I think he’s definitely onto something here, though I’d also add that the structure of the media and its corporate logics are also factors we should take note of.
The post concludes:
…perhaps the urge to blog is driven not so much by the tendency of journalists towards “safety first”, but because journalists are by and large socially homogenous and don’t reaffirm the views of most bloggers, who in reaction create their own social networks.
Which is not why I blog at all, but then, I am an statistically inadequate sample, and this post is pure speculation on which I hope to get some feedback from other bloggers.
Part of the academic stuff I’m working on this year goes to the question of the motivation for the creation of “user-generated content”. In the context of political blogging, I’m not at all certain that the sorts of categories the citizen journalism literature employs – ie “monitorial citizen”, “public sphere” and so on – are at all adequate for understanding the desire to blog.
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.
All good things eventually come to an end. And so has the fifth Labour government. They made a good run of it, but as a third term government hoping for a fourth, the odds were always against them. In the end, the mood for change was just too great. But looking at the final result – a likely National-ACT coalition – I’m wondering whether this was really the change people were looking for.
While Key has promised to govern for all New Zealanders, carefully moved his party to the centre, and promised to retain core Labour policies such as interest-free student loans and Working For Families, the coalition demands of ACT and the current financial crisis make those promises worthless. And the result, I suspect, is that they will be left by the wayside, dumped because Roger Rodney demanded it, or because we “just can’t afford it” (while shovelling vast wodges of cash at the rich). Even if Key – who seems to have no solid beliefs beyond his own ambition – was inclined to resist ACT’s demands, National’s hardliners, the 90’s retreads like Bill English, Lockwood Smith, Murray McCully and Maurice Williamson, won’t be. And with 64 MPs between them, there will be no effective check on their legislative program.
The good news is that I doubt the public will stand for that sort of betrayal. If National pulls that switcheroo and rules from the right having run from the centre, it will be a one-term government. But it could still do a significant amount of damage in that term – damage which would take another decade to repair.
As for Labour, while they’ve lost, they’ve also brought in a pile of new talent, and should be in a strong position for 2011. Until then, it’s probably going to be a nasty, bitter three years.
It’s sad to read that Tim Dunlop is closing down The Road to Surfdom, one of the original Australian political blogs, and one that’s been a great contributor to commentary and discussion over a sustained period of time. It’s not wholly unexpected, but it’s still sad. Tim, the other Surfdom bloggers who won’t be continuing to blog individually, and the joint itself will all be very much missed.
Tim has some reflections on the role online media plays and its value and potential vis-a-vis the mainstream media which I think are clearly heartfelt and incredibly important, so I’m going to take the liberty of quoting his last post at some length. In particular, I want to endorse Tim’s sentiments about the necessity of supporting and growing the independent online mediaspace, and I want to point out how those comments have direct implications for the sort of work we do at LP, and how that work could be enhanced. But more of that later.
Continue reading ‘End of the Road for Surfdom; and the future of independent online media’
Image of spontaneous street celebrations in Harlem courtesy of matt semel at flickr – reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.
No doubt one of the big stories about the US election will be the influence of the blogosphere and the netroots. In many ways, the rise of the intertubes in politics was an unintended consequence of the Rove approach to politics, as Publius perceives:
The bigger story is that this same anger – this same frustration – has led liberals to organize in more numerous and consequential ways. In the last few years, we’ve seen new think tanks. We’ve seen blogs flower. We’ve seen the rise of media sites like TPM and Huffington with real journalistic chops. We’ve seen unprecedented efforts to register and canvass voters.
In short, we’ve seen a new energy driving liberals back to politics.
In an opinion piece at ABC Online, Barry Saunders sums up the changes that net based activism and citizen journalism have wrought:
The impact of social media on this election has been enormous. Whoever takes office will have to deal with widely available factchecking data, embarrassing videos, rabid wingnuts, opinionated bloggers and TV hosts, and a massive number of new voters and donors who feel they have invested in the American political process – as well as two wars and a collapsing economy. Here’s hoping they know what they’re doing.
The polls have begun to tighten in the NZ election, with several showing the National Party’s expected majority evaporating under the pressure of the campaign and the international financial meltdown. Meanwhile, the parties are also deciding their coalition preferences. The Greens have announced explicitly that they will back a Labour government, and ACT has done the same for National. United Future hasn’t made an explicit arrangement that I can recall, but would clearly be happier with a National government, while National leader John Key has ruled out any sort of arrangement with New Zealand First (though he was clearly expecting them not to be a factor anyway). But neither coalition is sure of a majority, even without the complication of a potential overhang – which leaves the Maori Party as likely king- (or rangitira-) maker.
So which way will they jump? Continue reading ‘Which way will the Maori Party jump? (NZ election)’
When I first discovered FiveThirtyEight.Com (courtesy of Down and Out of Sài Gòn on one of the American election threads here at LP, if I recall correctly), I thought of Nate Silver as America’s Possum. Coincidentally, there’s a profile of Silver published in New York magazine which makes some very similar points about the emergence of a statistician doing psephological wonkery as an avocation into a major source of expertise and information on elections as an article sounding that theme from Monash University Journalism Professor Chris Nash in the new edition of the Pacific Journalism Review.
Just think what elections would be like without Possums and Silvers! If all we had to rely on for psephological goodness was the dead tree media…
Spring must be the season when people turn their minds to starting blogs, or at least spring 2005 was when some excellent people did. It’s the three year blogiversary for both Pavlov’s Cat and Hoyden About Town. Warm salutations and felicitations to both!
Pavlov’s Cat also has some interesting reflections on being a sociable blogger, and how addictive it can be. It’s well worth remembering that there is stuff to do other than correct people who are wrong on the internets. Continue reading ‘Happy blogiversary, Pavlov’s Cat and Hoyden About Town!’
The New Zealand election is still in a phoney campaign, with the parties only just beginning to launch their campaigns. Which gives me more time to fill in the background. Deborah has already done an excellent beginner’s guide to MMP, so I thought I’d follow up with what MMP naturally results in: coalitions. Continue reading ‘A beginner’s guide to coalitions (NZ election)’
I thought I’d do this quick post to note the passing of Tim Dunlop’s Blogocracy Blog at News Ltd.
This will be the last weekend open thread; in fact, it will be the last thread of any sort here at Blogocracy. I have handed in my notice and I am finishing up today. I do this with a great deal of sadness but also with a sense of excitement about new prospects.
Establishing his blogging cred at Road to Surfdom, Tim became one of Australia’s notable and most thoughtful bloggers so it was no surprise to see him get a gig somewhere in the MSM. It wasn’t without some early difficulties but the blog found its space and audience and Tim probably delivered what the editors wanted.
It’s easy to be critical, but as any full time blogger knows, two years plugging away at a very busy blog is hard work and can rub the creative edges off any writer.
Happily we hear that Tim is off to recharge his creative batteries; that will eventually produce a book, something that I’ll look forward to, so he should know he’ll sell at least one copy.
So long and thanx for the fish Tim.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
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