It seems we’re all talking about blogging today – after Jeremy noted that some journalists don’t seem to understand what the word means, I want to talk about Christian Kerr’s latest column.
Kerr seems to be saying that the Australian political blogosphere is no good because our bloggers don’t do what journalists do – break stories. Rather than uncovering and reporting the news, the political blogs in Australia (according to Kerr, at least) comment on the work done by the traditional media. This seems to be based on a flawed assumption that blogging is, or should aspire to be, “citizen journalism”, and an equally flawed assumption that analysis of others’ commentary serves little purpose. And Kerr’s arguments themselves seem to contradict one other. The Australian blogosphere apparently is too analytical – with Kerr singling out Crikey’s own Possum (while misspelling Scott Steel’s name) for criticism here – while simultaneously claiming that the blogosphere is too intolerant and unable to consider alternative viewpoints.
This isn’t exactly a new argument from Kerr – in fact, it’s somewhat ironic that he is back to grinding this axe, when last year he was calling blogs an “echo chamber where assertions are endlessly repeated.” And it’s a regular topic for discussion among blogging journalists, most recently at the Sydney Writers’ Festival.
As a contributor to a blog whose primary purpose is to critique the work of journalists and columnists, it should be obvious that I see value in analytical blogging. And it seems to me that the traditional media are starting to see value in the same model, with News Ltd’s The Punch serving as an aggregator of news and opinion and attempting to build a discussion community around it, along somewhat similar lines to the current iteration of Crikey’s web site. And Kerr’s particular targets seem to be driven by the Australian’s desire to discredit its critics and competitors in the online space, with bloggers such as Possum and William Bowe having damaged the reputation of that paper as a reliable source of polling analysis.
Does Kerr have a point about the poverty of news-breaking in Australia’s blogosphere, and should blogs be judged according to how well they usurp the role of journalists? I’ll be interested to hear what you all think (but only if you agree with me completely, of course).
UPDATE: On a related note, it looks like Fairfax is getting into the opinion aggregation game. On the details announced so far, Jason Whittaker’s criticism of The Punch would seem to apply equally to National Times. If the traditional media corporations are moving to online models that don’t actually involve journalism, why does Kerr believe the blogosphere should be derided for being a journalistic failure?
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I think there is a role for news-breaking in blogging that we haven’t yet cracked in Australia, and that’s a shame. I think that will come over time, however.
I tend to think that primary news-breaking is the one element of blogging that hasn’t yet developed sufficiently to replace newspapers. But we will. I reckon in 5-10 years we will have big blogs that have bloggers based in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. We haven’t yet developed as far as the US, but we will.
if some blogs are analytical then that’s because our traditional media is less so. I rarely read the opinion pages of newspapers simply because you can dismiss most of it as blatant agenda-pushing and it’s a waste of time. most of the analytical content I read comes from blogs that have specialist knowledge or can write from an outsider perspective – the MSM are sometimes just too cosy with their subject that their work becomes a re-hash of what 5 other journos have alreeady written.
And on the subject of blogs not breaking news, wasn’t it Mark Bahnish who had some breaking news stories of his own during the queensland election that the news ltd papers didn’t get?
UPDATE: On a related note, it looks like Fairfax is getting into the opinion aggregation game. On the details announced so far, Jason Whittaker’s criticism of The Punch would seem to apply equally to National Times. If the traditional media corporations are moving to online models that don’t actually involve journalism, why does Kerr believe the blogosphere should be derided for being a journalistic failure?
It’s one of those irregular verbs –
I “commentate” on various issues
You “blog”
They “run an online shit-sheet”
And bagging amateurs for not “breaking stories” like journos are paid to do is a little short sighted when you haven’t broken a story since you told everyone your real name.
Kerr’s would be more of a talking point if he and other Oz journos did the backbreaking research that creates stories which do “break the news”; but the latest good story (re fraud at the Sharks) was broken by Channel 7; the Defence Dept one by Fairfax. In fact, the last decent Oz story was on the Haneef Affair, and only because the solicitor chose to leak transcripts through TheOz. In fact, 4Corners (& sometimes Australian Story) are the national leaders in breaking / reconsidering major stories.
On-line access to all other national and major international newspapers has removed the need for the Oz’s “analytical commentary” on National & International Affairs – none of its journos can hold a candle to the top UK, USA & SE Asian EL newspapers, and most senior NEL papers are now available in English translation. TheOz has, since Switzer first joined it degenerated into “the tabloid you have when it’s wearing broadsheet clothing”; full of wild beat-ups which are only too soon thoroughly refuted, and/or stories by once-respected journos who haven’t managed to get over Howard’s demise – gods only know what they’ll do now Costello isn’t standing for preselection – and Switzer’s demise hasn’t improved it a jot.
A buyer from the first ever Oz, I did not renew my subscription when it ran out Christmas 2007, and the on-line version is so full of the mundane, often hysterically reported, that I’ve already read it on Fairfax or ABC sites. That the latest NewsLtd attempt at “intelligent discussion” stated it didn’t want the well-educated (it those who know how to argue with references) says it all – it’s a propaganda organ for the overly-credible, not a discusion board for the rational! What does that say about the standards off journalism?
Maybe bloggers don’t yet have the story-breaking capacity, because they don’t yet have the advertising revenue to hire bright young “independent” investigative journos – the types who do go undercover, underground, “deep throat” and break stories of state/ nation / world. As advertising $$$ move from trad “papers” to online “papers” like HuffPost & Crikey, and to blogs, I expect that up & coming journos will change that. But they won’t be hooked on print & ink – online version or not; they’ll be multi-media journalists with more in common with 4 Corners than The Oz!
The point that seems to miss NewsLtd (inc TheOz) completely is that we live in an on-line multi-medial – soon to be 3D – world. It’s to fully-streamed on-line AV news that the computer savvy will turn; not to the world of newspapers that haven’t yet “got it” about Global communication convergence.
who is he talking about?
another thing i thought of is the demise of investigative journalism – who in the major papers does this anymore? Since the Howard govt played culture wars with the ABC their capacity to undertake this has been cowed and has dimished, and fairfax and news ltd prefer to report the latest britney spears episode or cross promotional revenue flaunt. I remember Sunday used to have good stories, but that’s gone now too.
Didn’t the Will Anderson live twitter about Gretel Killeen’s Logie performance?
Methinks that blows your “too analytical” and no “citizen journalism” arguments out of the water.
Kerr is partly right though. Journalism is often expensive and time-consuming and ‘citizen journalists’ often don’t have the time or resources needed to pursue stories. His points about echo-chambers and commentary serving little purpose are less valid, because every institution needs somebody to fact-check and insure they do not overstep their bounds. Journos would love it if Media Watch vanished, for example.
The demise of good, investigative journalism and the collapse of established newspapers both here and overseas does not necessarily mean that blogging has usurped traditional journalism. Traditional media has simply failed to evolve with the changing methods of distribution. The rise of blogging has coincided with this trend, but has not necessarily caused it.
Kerr ignores the importance of blogging at his own risk. Perhaps he is unaware of the current Iranian election crisis and the importance of microblogging sites like Twitter in information distribution.
One-man band reporting for duty.
‘Breaking stories’ generally requires one of two things: 1) the resources necessary to engage in investigative journalism or; 2) insider knowledge. The handful of corporations which dominate the Australian media / state-controlled media certainly have resources, but are constrained in their use of them by commercial considerations, especially in the case of the former (and increasingly so in the case of the latter). Insider knowledge, on the other hand, depends upon being able to cultivate relationships, which in turn relies upon access to the appropriate social networks (such as Kerr once took advantage of).
To the extent that blogging provides access to online publishing by those without financial resources, or access to privileged networks of information sharing, bloggers are unlikely to ‘break’ stories. Beyond this, there is also the question of what actually constitutes ‘news’ — what stories are important, and why? It appears to be implicit in Kerr’s argument that a breaking story is one that first appears on a blog — say, “Guido Fawkes” — before then being picked up the corporate or state media sector. But what constitutes an important event also depends upon one’s own perspective, and the blogosphere provides opportunities for the expression of alternative values and perspectives — in some respects, it is precisely this quality which renders it valuable.
Blah blah blah.
(confessions: Kerr is making a reference to Andrew Landeryou of ‘vex news’ / ‘The Other Cheek’ fame.)
Landeryou does break stories. To admit this, however, would have undermined Kerr’s premise, so he chose to rubbish him as a Labor frontman instead.
Which, considering the OO’s obvious leanings, is a bit of cheek.
Unnamed Melbourne `shit-sheet’ merchant guy is no-more-or-less a partisan shill than the proto-blogger who posted reports to this great media institution (Crikey!) from the Liberal Party HQ during the ‘01 federal election.
It’s actually a good article – when will Australia’s bloggers do something that shifts Australia’s political/moral/social landscape? Not by commenting on other peoples articles that’s for sure…
more on Plimer from Tim Lambert.
The (news ltd) MSM lapped up Plimer without doing one scerick of research about the claims in his book – how must they feel now? Why am i posting this here? Because here we have an example of bloggers breaking news that wouldn’t be reported by the hacks at the Australian – or other MSM outlets for that matter. Each time a reputable scientist denounces plimer’s claims it isn’t published in the mainstream news. it isn’t published on the news ltd blogs even, who are equally enthralled by such a discredited scientist. No, it gets published by individual bloggers like Tim Lambert, John Quiggin and LP, blogging without salary FFS, but with an interest in specialist fields of inquiry that the MSM can’t dedicate resources to without weaning itself off britney, palin, miley cyrus etc.
Kerr needs to re-discover his own internal journalist in
Let’s actually consider what political news-breaking traditional media journalists actually do.
Nearly all of political journalism in Australia consists of:
-Transcribing press conferences/question time – which can easily be done over the internet, and often is.
-Political analysis, just like what bloggers do (although much more commonly overtaken by political conventional wisdom due to their physical proximity and club atmosphere in the Press Gallery).
-The occasional strategic leak, which could easily be funnelled to free political bloggers (and has very little news value).
It’s extremely rare that the group of clowns who laughingly refer to themselves as ‘political journalists’ actually break any real news.
Of course, election campaigns are different. But in election campaigns most news reporting involves following the leaders and transcribing their comments. Online citizen journalism was already more relevant at the 2007 election, and I tend to think with innovations like Twitter it will be even more superior to traditional journalism come 2010.
Tobias
I agree blogs should not be judged solely on their ability to break news, but when they do break stories – sometimes, big ones – it ought to be acknowledged:
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2009/06/16/A-blog-that-breaks-stories.aspx
I like the term public trust journalism which I read first on Crikey. While I don’t blog as such. I like to start strings on public forums with a question like Nathan Rees is Gillian Sneddon proof you cant protect NSW whistleblowers? I suspect main stream reporters are a bit unhappy their bailiwicks are being invaded by increasing numbers of people self publishing. We are living through change which I hope will bring with it new freedoms of expression, not just speech.
LP has another post on the Kerr article and its relevence in the scheme of things.
I think Mark’s on the money with this:
for me it’s like the major players have some kind of envy towards independent media. It’s why bolt won’t link directly to Crikey, why glenn milne got pissed and shoved stephen mayne at that awards thing years ago when he was still involved with Crikey, and why miranda devine bizarrely referred to New Matilda as a “puerile” publication at the weekend. Their turf is being invaded and it’s as if they no longer have the skills to exist in the new age.
Wow. I agree with confessions!
But it’s cute how you conveniently ignored the slow (but soooo enjoyable to watch) death of the “mainstream media” in the hands of the loony left. Fairfax print is toast, the NYT is toast, cable news in the US has lost so much ground to Fox News you wonder why they bother.
That the major players no longer have the skills to exist is spot on.
Cyberspace contributions are read avidly by one and skimped over by an educated commentator interested only in his/her own byline.
Re Origin football. My dictionary has four comments on the word Maroon: Firework producing loud report; West Indian fugitive slave;To put ashore and abandon; Wild and savage. Thought it was worth mentioning.
Rupert Murdoch is part of the loony left???