To date, most of the political blogs that employees of the old media have paid attention to have been noisy, gossipy, and abusive ones. This makes sense: the people in the media who read them also tend to be noisy, gossipy, and abusive. Such sites don’t threaten the old order and the blogs’ proprietors are self-promoters anyway, more interested in gaining attention from journalists than in fostering intelligent debate or doing creative things with technology.
(I should point out here again, as I often do, that there is little “new” about most of what hacks call “new media”. The basic forms of blogs and wikis just resurrect the original, widely forgotten read/write models of the World Wide Web. There are, however, many new things about new media in the wider sense of that phrase.)
Unfortunately, because these prominent “political” blogs are rubbish, a lot of the attention they attract consists of journalists dismissing new media as a whole. I still remember reading an article written in the 90s, about thirty years after email was invented, declaring it doomed to be a short-lived craze, as the author put it: “email is the new CB radio“. Like most newspaper technology opinion, this was of course ignorant, clichéd, stupid, and wrong.
In some ways these blogs are to dead tree journalism like early steam locomotives used to be to stationary engines: almost as loud and smelly, but now they run on a network. As you appreciate when you travel in the same carriage from the British side of the Chunnel to the French side, it’s the networks that are the important things.
More interesting in the long term than the steamblogs are collectives like mySociety and Bloggers4Labour and sites like Never Trust A Hippy and Stumbling and Mumbling. The former use technological ideas to make politics more interesting and the latter promote interesting political ideas—I write this despite disagreeing with them both on matters their proprietors hold dear. Many thoughtful people value blogs like Mick Hartley’s that connect them to important stories around the World that are neglected by the mainstream—even by World Service programmes broadcast on BBC Radio 4 frequencies at 3am. All of these sites focus on things existing media channels usually don’t.
Just as with the dotcom train before it, the roofs of new media / Web 2.0 wagons are heavy with those who were late to the station. They are as clueless as they are conspicuous. They wave their arms at passers-by and pronounce confidently about this “new” technology and its cultural consequences, despite failing to understand either the technology or the culture. On the Right, for example, we have Iain Dale publishing a dead tree “guide to political blogging” and (God help us) rating Britain’s best political blogs. This is like Dan Brown writing a companion to English literature and electing himself a Booker Prize judge. On the Left we have Oliver Kamm denouncing “Internet blogging” as “a significant net liability for the quality of our political culture”. Even without the revealing redundancy of “Internet blogging”, and the pseudo precision of “significant net liability”, this is just silly. You might as well condemn “electromechanical photocopying” as “a significant net liability for the quality of our amateur dramatics culture”. Undermining his own argument, unlike Iain Dale, Oliver Kamm at least has a good blog.
Former Labour PPC Mike Ion sends me spam. This says a lot about his understanding of the culture of the Net. You won’t be surprised when I say his article about the state of political blogging isn’t very good. It appears on Comment Is Free, an embarrassing wreck shunted out of the otherwise outstandingly successful Guardian factory of online content. (Boggle at the open thread currently on CiF that invites the site’s notoriously sociopathic and intellectually challenged commenters to offer their “solution[s for] Iraq”. Tomorrow I’m going to pop round to the local infant school and invite the munchkins in the reception class there to prove the Riemann hypothesis.)
I hope Andrew Regan is going to help me fix a Website on Sunday. You won’t be surprised when I say his response to Ion’s article is very good. It is also followed by Regan’s quietly delivering to “Praguetory” one of the most crushing blog comment box put-downs I’ve ever read.
Jon Cruddas sends me spam too, repeatedly asking for my support for him in the Labour deputy leadership election. To say that “This says a lot about his understanding of the culture of the Net” is one way of putting it.
Hmmm. ‘You spelled his name wrong’ lacks a certain something in the crushing put-down department I feel.
There was more to Andrew’s comment than that, but I’ll indulge you and imagine there wasn’t. Let’s try this for size:
Compelling, isn’t it?
Except, to make this a more accurate parallel, you’d have to substitute “Damian Counsel” as the example of one of the most influential biologists ever.
Cambridge University admissions tutors rightly used to begin their sifting of medical school applicants by discarding all the UCCA forms in which the word “medicine” had been misspelled.
What about ‘Zbigniew Brzezinksy was a phenomenally influential policy adviser’? Montgomery/Montgomerie is quite an easy mistake to make – witness all those journalists mispelling George Osborne
It’s simple. If you are going to attempt a lofty brag about your superior knowledge of an individual and, in the process of doing so, you demonstrate your ignorance of even the most basic fact about that individual then you are going to fall—especially when the person you are accusing of ignorance knows better than you do.
(If Andrew had just wanted to be generally pedantic he might have pointed out that Praguetory doesn’t know the difference between “different to” and “different from” or that his writing style is comically pompous: “Anyone with knowledge … would find it difficult to argue otherwise”, “I’d suggest that … for yourself“, “It is well known that in advance of certain important announcements…”.)
Andrew Regan dislodged Praguetory from his high horse elegantly. And, with the kind of obtuse footling that gives blogging a bad name, you are just digging yourself a bigger hole.
Do you have anything at all to say about the substance of my post? Are you Benji in disguise? What it is about Café PooterGeek that attracts Right-wing suicide commenters to try to blow themselves up here, while the unscathed proprietor and his patrons gaze at the visitors’ wet, exploded rucksacks in mystification?
Uh-oh. I’ve got to go. The Metaphor Police are knocking at my door—and, besides, Tom has just added to Praguetory’s pain.
Ok, some stuff about the substance of the post then. Sorry that it’s in the form of questions, it’s just how it came out. It’s not meant to sound nasty or hectoring or anything. Besides, if I did it in the form of statements I might accidentally be pseudo precise.
Do you have any view on the idea that the basic forms of blogs (although probably not wikis, unless you want to get pretentious) are a lot older than early Internet forms – that they can be seen as a return to pamphleteering?
Are journalists who dismiss new media more or less dangerous than journalists who embrace new media without the slightest scepticism – I offer almost every single Second Life article on the BBC news website as example.
Was the person who said ’email is the new CB radio’ Simon Jenkins? If not, what asinine thing did he say?
What do you mean when you say blogs are networked in a way that old media wasn’t? I can’t imagine it as old media columnists writing in a vacuum (although there are a few I would like to see try).
Are group blogs like Bloggers4Labour a big step forward just by being a group, or is there something more to them? Similarly, couldn’t praising Mick Hartley or Paul ‘Paulie’ Paulinsonington be more about praising good writers – good writers being good partly by their choice of subject and material – than making a statement about a particular medium? (I completely agree that MySociety is in a different league.)
Actually, come to think of it are you arguing that blogging is a neutral medium and that blaming it for the existence of bad blogs is silly, or that there are unique advantages to blogs (and presumably, therefore, unique disadvantages)?
Is Commentisfreegate not proof of inherent dangers in blogging, or at least blogging to a wide audience or is it a one off? And if not, what exactly would you say are the mistakes made?
Are Oliver Kamm’s arguments (to be fair, more other people’s arguments that he agrees with) about the blogging medium enouraging 1) groupthink 2) production of heat over light 3) a view of truth as something that is democratically determined really dismissed by pointing out that he once wrote ‘Internet blogs’? Even Homer nodded.
Are accusations of just not getting it every really a good idea?
Given how much the Net likes neologisms, why aren’t political bloggers called ploggers? Then you could plug thogging bloggerity ploggers.
Disclaimer: none of the above is intended to be a lofty brag about superior knowledge.
Blogging is a great way to get one’s ideas across, and comes with some handy features (feeds, etc.) to ease distribution and make readers’ lives easier, but the technology is still too crude to really liberate non-techies. The original point, though, was about political engagement, and the idea that some kind of watershed had been reached in engagement between voters and politicians, without any thought as to what that would mean in practice, how real-world decisions can be made on the basis of comments left in a box (sometimes lots) by people whose demographics and motives are unknown – all on the basis of a few fairly ordinary blogs from Labour MPs.
A further point is concern at ‘commentators’ with an interest in promoting the ‘now’, rather than the ‘better’. Blogs/bloggers who display a genuine interest in how the technology can be improved, and online political engagement enhanced – even if they don’t have the answers now – should be supported instead. The (or rather, one) problem with CiF is the idea that the most commented-on threads are the most valuable/democratic, even though that’s generally a sign that they’re haunted by the kind of people who would try to boycott Zionist football teams, accuse NuLabour of genocide, or who believe that Tesco’s actions constitute “ethnic cleansing” (see Thursday’s). That’s not democracy, these are the ravings of fanatics.
Digging myself a hole? In what possible way? I didn’t have much to say about the post in general – except that it seems, with this post as with others, that you are more inclined to see ‘valuable contributions to blogging’ in blogs with which you are more closely politcally aligned. That’s obviously natural enough. I was, however, unaware that in order to comment on on of your posts, the post, in its entirety, must be referred to.
Saying that making a spelling mistake is, ipso facto, enough to destroy your argument is fatuous. Calling me a suicide commenter (an amusing enough image I suppose, for those who like their imagery obvious) on the grounds that we disagree (on a trivial point in your post) rather implies that anyone who holds a different opinion to yours has, inherently, shown themselves to be stupid. This certainly gives an impression of arrogance. Burbling on about “giving blogging a bad name” would seem to display the same sin of pomposity that you attribute to Prague Tory.
Chris:
I certainly think there’s truth in that. I also think that’s a good thing. The most annoying people in the blogosphere tend not to have their own blogs (or at least not successful ones), but instead clog up other, non-annoying, blogs with pointless comments—because usually no one wants to read what they have to say.
I don’t think they’re dangerous; they’re just irrelevant. The best they can hope for is to collect their fees now and be laughed at one day like the one with the “email is the new CB radio” comment or people who thought we’d suffocate when trains got above thirty miles-an-hour. I mean, who cares what they think?
I don’t know the answer to either of these questions, but I can understand why you’re asking them.
Blogging here, I’ve had an administrator in Washington DC respond to my amateur musings on US politics, real writers respond to my wibbling about literature, and a professor of evolutionary biology elaborate on what I’ve had to say about what used to be my specialist subject. I’m a true believer in the power of the Internet, but I never imagined these sorts of things would happen when I started PooterGeek.
Like most people, journalists tend to hang out with others doing the same job in the same town. If they want a response from an expert on the other side of the planet they have to go looking for it. Blogging connects you to people who know better without your even having to pick up a phone.
B4L is interesting because there are piles of smart code underlying it. It’s much more than just a blog aggregator. What’s extraordinary is that it does on a shoestring the kind of stuff that used to take rooms full of well-paid personnel—in fact the kind of thing that, in a lot of organisations, still does take rooms full of well-paid personnel.
You could say that, but if it weren’t for the technology I’d probably never have got to read their output.
Yes.
Comment Is Free is a failure of principle. They make many unwise choices of contributor and they failed to moderate the forums aggressively from the outset. Running a good forum is a bit like running a good classroom. If you don’t show some kind of moral discrimination and fairness, if you don’t establish authority from the moment you walk into the room, then you’re screwed forever after.
No. One of the most depressing things about blogs is reading the firm conclusions of people who have no idea what they are talking about. I’ve been “on” the Net since the late 80s; I worked for a dotcom firm before people used the term; even I wouldn’t dream of pontificating about the Web the way so many johnny-come-latelies do every day in the press.
I don’t “get it” either. That’s my point. The difference is I have enough direct experience and knowledge to appreciate my ignorance. Doing science teaches you the limits your knowledge and the difficulty of predicting technology. Funnily enough, I have a blog in development about blogging and the strap line is: “Anyone who says they get it probably doesn’t get it.”
And my answers are off the top of my head because I have lots of work to do now.
Timj:
That’ll be why I left this comment over at Tim Worstall’s place yesterday.
Crushing! If I was writing a piece for the Grauniad I would have got the names I quoted right. Leaving a comment on a website, I’m not going to do any checks. You think that Mike Ion or Andrew R knows more about Tim M than me! Have they (for example) met his family? I have. Spent time talking to him. Know his friends? I doubt it.
Praguetory:
Good point. If only Andrew knew Tim’s chums like you do then he’d be better able to judge the man’s position within the political pantheon.
Because ‘more inclined’ is obviously the same as ‘totally inclined’…
Timj, you made your comment accusing me of partisanship in my assessment of the value of blogs under a piece in which the blog I am most strongly critical of is one run by The Guardian, a piece in which the punchline is my negative response to a former Labour PPC’s blog post claiming that “Left of centre political blogging is on the rise”. Is there any limit to your self-documenting wrongness?
This is like fighting with the Black Knight.
TimJ,
I don’t think that’s quite right. There must be some sort of alignment (you might call it “agreement”) for those blogs to be named at all, but you’ll have to work harder to show that it was political proximity that caused them to be named. For example, while doubt was cast over the “influence” of Tim Montgomerie (as well as the Commentariat), nobody here has dissed ConservativeHome. Nor has B4L. Perhaps the fact that the same handful of right-leaning blogs gets mentioned time and time again (plus the occasional bandwagon-jumping/loony left one) shows us that there’s something about *them*, and that your theory is unproven.
Well if you will insist on getting things worng, check this. William Hague spends half hour talking through policy announcemnt with Tim M.
For God’s sake! Stating that a broadly left-of-centre blogger tends to find more to approve of in broadly left-of-centre blogs is hardly an accusation. Nor indeed is the fact that you dislike Comment is Free a refutation of that point.
I suppose I could be wrong here and that you tend to prefer right-wing blogs, though I don’t see much evidence of it, but your tendency to seek out antagonism in every comment and then leap about proclaiming ‘victory’ in some arbitrary contest is puerile at best.
your tendency to seek out antagonism in every comment and then leap about proclaiming ‘victory’ in some arbitrary contest is puerile at best.
Have you looked in a mirror recently?
Timj:
Indeed. I wouldn’t have minded your saying that if it were true. But it is demonstrably not. One of the main reasons I defend blogging so much is because through it I get to “meet” people like Tim Worstall, with whom I am broadly in disagreement, but who say many things that I agree with and make me question things I think I believe in.
And now you’re right about something else too. This is puerile. It’s almost as though your aim in commenting here was to prove the worthlessness of political blogging.
If you’d turned up and challenged my main thesis (such as it was) with evidence and reason then we’d probably be having an interesting discussion instead of point scoring. Chris’s comment was a bit snarky in places, but I responded to it thoughtfully and at length because he obviously wanted to talk about the issue at hand rather than just snipe. (I imagine that this is one reason why Andrew was so dismissive of Praguetory. The man didn’t come to argue; he came to bray.)
If you browse back through the longest threads here at PooterGeek, you’ll see that it’s often the people who disagree with me most deeply whom I take most seriously. The people who get a kicking don’t get one for opposing my views; they get one because they are rude or wilfully stupid. And I frequently engage with the rude ones if they have a valid argument. I’m still waiting for your valid argument.
Excellent analysis.
However, I’m not sure that you can characterise Oliver Kamm as someone late to the station, since he has been blogging since 2003, and I always had the impression that his blogging came first rather than his journalism. His first post gives that impression. I may be wrong, but a quick search seems to suggest his newpaper contributions before then mainly consisted of a long track record of letter writing – almost as big as that of the legendary Keith Flett. The first I could find was in The Independent on the 21st of February 1991:
While he is a lot more polished now, his trademark style is highly evident – as well as his interests.
That said, I’m not sure why he is so disparaging about blogs these days, especially since he wasn’t adverse to getting sucked into blogfights with “the stupidest blogger alive” (Beatnik Salad) and still occasionally pops up at Harry’s Place to get his hands dirty wrestling hedgehogs. I suppose taking on the World’s leading intellectual means you have to put such things behind you.
When I was a blogger, I used to value blogs; when I became a newspaper columnist, I did away with bloggish things.
Anthony:
Fair enough; but just forget the facts for a moment and look at my lovely, lovely extended metaphor and its gleaming streamlined engine.
Anthony: it may seem odd, but I wasn’t aiming to make any sweeping points in this – merely that mis-spelling a name wasn’t necessarily sufficient to discredit an argument. I certainly wasn’t looking for antagonism – no insults from me.
As for the main thrust of the post, that most political blogs are tiresome and poorly written is beyond doubt. The more interesting blogs are indeed ones that do something more than ‘newspaper light’ – sites like Chris Dillow’s, or Tim Newman’s. I think it is perhaps debatable to accuse Iain Dale of ‘failing to understand’ blogging – it is not, after all, a rigidly defined medium. Dale’s concept of blogging is no less valid than your own. Is there a case to be made that to attempt to define political blogging narrowly, as Tim Ireland has been doing, is to miss the point?
I doubt that I disagree with you strongly on many things, and there was certainly nothing in this post to provoke violent disagreement. But I do dislike your tendency to say ‘You’re wrong – that makes you a suicide commenter – no worse! It’s like arguing with the Black Knight’ when there was very little disagreement in substance, and certainly no argument in the strict sense of the word.
If you have absolutely no political preferences in the blogs that you like then I apologise for seeing a trend that wasn’t there. It would be unusual for there to be absolutely no such leaning from someone with a defined political viewpoint. As I said above, and repeat, this wasn’t an accusation.
Thanks for your reply PG. I look forward to the birth of your new website.
Kamm is such a fucking tool. Can’t everyone just stop wasting their attention on him.
Okay, bob’s comment in this thread has finally clinched it now. Oliver Kamm was right all along about “Internet blogging” and “the quality of our political culture”.
It’s just a mild CIF infection.
I think that the whole term ‘blog’ masks such a diversity that it’s hard to really draw too many conclusions on the subject.
If we’re talking about this portmanteau ‘thogging’, thogs do allow you to advance arguments very effectively. I say this because I think it’s normally harder to communicate an argument to others than it is to formulate it to yourself.
So conversational exchanges allow you to address complexity much more easily and accessibly than one-way communications. I find that – because you make those arguments incrementally – you also helps improve the wider argument as well.
They also allow you to use other devices (empathy, wit, charm etc) to encourage people to WANT you to make your point.
I know that, even though I’ve written squillions of words on my blog essentially making only one basic point (a small-c conservative argument that the classic model of democracy is working incredibly well, and most of it’s failings are obvious imperfections that could be fixed easily), I haven’t yet revealed every element of my arguments on this one point yet.
So, personal consistancy takes the place of complexity and linguistic precision here. I can always say “I know what I meant” – and I can usually prove it by showing other similar points.
It also means that anyone who wants to engage with me conversationally can do so. Anyone who simply wants to score points is wasting their (and my) time. The best way to pick an argument without breaking the conversational tone is to pick an assertion in one of someone’s argument and contest it.
On the question of group blogs, I would argue that they aren’t really comparable to personal blogs – and they distort the debate about whether ‘blogging’ is making a positive or negative impact on public discourse.
Despite being an occassional contributor to one of them (Drink Soaked Trots) I’m generally a bit suspicious of group-blogs. For the most part, they put one in mind of a soft launch for a planned magazine. There is a ‘collective responsibility’ thing that doesn’t really work if you use your site to advance an argument.
Even my personal favourite – Mick Fealty’s Slugger O’Toole – http://www.sluggerotoole.com – is, in many ways, an interactive newspaper that uses technology that has been designed for bloggers.
B4L is an exception to all of this of course. Andrew is a really first rate blogger – one of the best – and his site is an interesting experiment in aggregation and community building. But I think he has somewhat succumbed to the temptation of using the latter to attract attention to the former though.
But, comparing CiF or Iain Dale’s ‘Doughty Street’ site with some of the better thogs is not a like-with-like comparison. They make less money and generate lower quality arguments than newspapers, so you can confidently say that they don’t have a ‘public interest defence’, whatever other reason they may have for existing.
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