Category: Media

Blog Nation: what would I like to see discussed

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Sunny ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ Hundal is organising a follow-up to 2008’s successful ‘Blog Nation’ event. Details over at Liberal Conspiracy, but Sunny asks what we’d like to discuss; below the fold, then, are some thoughts.

In terms of logistics, I would make three suggestions. Given the layout, it’s important that each table isn’t talking amongst itself thereby making so much noise that you can’t hear the speaker. Secondly, there are two breakout rooms. I would like to see the two used for an hour each for anyone to stand up a present an idea for five minutes. Thirdly, I’d like to see it recorded and ideally live streamed. Certainly, the plenary sessions could be on uStream or BlogTV.

Continue reading “Blog Nation: what would I like to see discussed” →

Exploiting grief

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I have nothing but sympathy for Jacqui Janes. I can’t begin to imagine what she’s going through. No parent should have to bury their child, but it must be near-unendurable to wonder whether more could have been done to save Jamie Janes’ life.

I’d love to know if the Sun has passed money to Mrs Janes. I don’t begrudge her it, but if the PM called me up out of the blue, I doubt I’d have the presence of mind to record the conversation. It’d take me a minute or two of fiddling with the phone to work out how to do it. Unless, of course, I’d been primed to do it by person or persons unknown.

I think putting a private letter in the press is a little tasteless. I do wonder how this ended up in the Sun’s hands; was it sent from Mrs Janes’ initiative or were the Sun speaking to each bereaved family, just on the off chance?

It’s no great secret that Gordon Brown is visually impaired and doesn’t write particularly legibly. Perhaps he should have rewritten the letter; perhaps not. If it has be checked by someone else, it probably would have been rewritten; there’s the rub. Instead of the PM’s honest & personal feelings, future letters will be drafted, scrutinised and typed up by a Wykehamist and then just signed by the PM, with all trace of human emotion and fallibility erased lest it end up on the front page of the gutter press.

The Sun seems to be using the anger occasioned by the loss of a son and soldier to score party political points. That dishonours his memory.

xD.

UPDATE 2150 – lots of other people have expressed similar sentiments to me, but there are a couple of particularly apposite posts by Bob Piper that I’d like to flag up. One is also called Exploiting Grief; the other is a fill-in-the-blanks form from 1916 that passed for a letter of condolence.

Guardian Local – a good thing

Posted on by David Landon Cole

A little while back, I wrote a piece arguing for a ‘Guardian London’ supplement to the Guardian, similar to Guardian America or Comment is Free, both here and at Liberal Conspiracy.

Whether or not the Guardian read, let alone paid any attention to, my thoughts, I am very glad to see this:

Guardian Local planned to launch next year
Starting with Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, guardian.co.uk is planning to launch a local news project in a small number of locations. At the moment guardian.co.uk is looking for bloggers – with journalistic qualifications “desirable” – to help cover community news, and report on local developments. The project will emphasise local political decision-making, and is scheduled to go live next year.

“Guardian Local is a small-scale experimental approach to local newsgathering. We are focusing on three politically engaged cities and we expect to launch in early 2010,” said Emily Bell, the director of digital development at Guardian News & Media.

Read more over at the Guardian. Now, I think there is a difference between the ‘local’ and ‘hyperlocal’ and the coverage I think London – the fifth home nation – needs. However, it takes the same line of wanting to build and support citizen journalism. London also needs better local coverage and, if coverage at the local level in London can be improved, we might be able to do the same for London level coverage.

xD.

Neil William’s template Twitter strategy

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Neil Williams (blog, Twitter) has drafted a template strategy for Government departments wanting to use Twitter; find it on the Cabinet Office’s Digital Engagement Blog or on Neil’s website as a PDF. It’s a good document – you have to bear in mind that this is for civil servants – and could be a good starting point for anyone with a brand to manage. It’s worth reading and I do hope that various people in HMG take it on board, particularly how useful it is as a conversational tool – I’ve had questions answered by MoD over Twitter in a matter of a couple of minutes and replied to a few things from Paul Drayson, Tom Watson and others.

I really like a particular idea that Neil has – departments live twittering their own press conferences and so on. That would be a real ‘value-added’.

A little while ago, I put all the regional and departmental RSS feeds that the COI’s News Distribution Service provide onto Twitter. The full list is here; I’m really pleased that Neil has listed me as an unofficial aggregator of government content, and more than a little flattered.

xD.

The government on Twitter

Posted on by David Landon Cole

The Central Office of Information run a rather good website called the News Distribution Service, formerly the Government News Network. Below the fold are the RSS and Twitter feeds in three groups – aggregate, departmental and regional.

Unfortunately, no-one knows about it as the COI doesn’t do much to promote it despite being “the Government’s centre of excellence for marketing and communications”. It consists of news updates for all the big bits of government – departments, agencies and regions – that you could want. It’s a good way of keeping an eye on what they’re all up to an finding the occasional hidden gem of a press release. They’ve had RSS feeds for ages and now they’re on Twitter (thanks to yours truly).

xD.

Continue reading “The government on Twitter” →

Nightmare on Fleet Street

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Now there’s an ominous title for a post. What’s started this post is the blogstorm over an article by Paula Murray. Read this, this, this and this. In short, Murray ran an article on the front page of the Scottish Sunday Express that attacked survivors of the Dunblane tragedy for using social networking sites like any other teenager. There are some slightly crude comments and some photos of them being teens. It would appear that a quote from Elizabeth Smith MSP was grossly taken out of context and that the article was deliberately run shortly after the survivors reached majority.

It is merely the latest, and a particularly egregious, example of the tabloids running stories that are not news, not fit to print, go after people who are unlikely to respond with content that seems designed to titillate the sense of moral outrage that a section of society – sadly, this is not an exclusively British phenomenon – seems to have permanently turned all the way up to eleven. It helps to shift newspapers and therefore increases advertising rates.

Let me describe a hypothetical situation. An increasing number of articles of this type (that is to say, of no public interest but of a salacious nature and for the most part aimed at people who do not have the means to take legal remedy) lead to an increasing amount of comment and dissatisfaction amongst what I am going to call the liberal elite, the political class, certain journalists and the media. This is increasingly picked up at Westminster, with Westminster Hall debates. Brought into these debates are the twin evils of reporting good science badly and reporting bad science – quack remedies and so on – at all. There is a public outcry after a child’s death is partially attributed to a particular newspaper article saying that such-and-such a disease can be cured by eating goji berries. Eventually, the PCC steps in and sets new guidelines for science reporting as an EDM condeming the poor levels of science reporting receives much support at Parliament. However, shortly afterwards, some poor sod ends up feelings so hounded by the media that they tragically commit suicide and it is felt that self-regulation is failing; not only are the papers reporting non-news, they are not reporting actual news. A Ten Minute Rule Bill is introduced by the MP whose constituent committed suicide calls for the PCC to be made a statutory body.

Perhaps this is all a bit unlikely; perhaps not. I think that state regulation of the newspapers would be A Bad Thing; however, the current, irresponsible manner of the exercise of free speech by some parts of the media could make that more likely.

xD.

George Monbiot gives whinging lefties a bad name

Posted on by David Landon Cole

In an open letter in yesterday’s Guardian, George Monbiot attacks Hazel Blears for being, well, Hazel Blears. I have no objection to whinging lefties. Indeed, I often whinge and (definitional objections notwithstanding) have been called a leftie. Monbiot gives us a bad name. Not only that, he makes what he wants to achieve and what I think I want to achieve less likely.

Last week you used an article in the Guardian to attack my “cynical and corrosive commentary”. You asserted your political courage, maintaining that “you don’t get very far in politics without guts, and certainly not as far as the cabinet table”. By contrast, you suggested, I contribute “to the very cynicism and disengagement from politics” that I make my living writing about. You accused me of making claims without supporting evidence and of “wielding great influence without accountability”. “We need more people standing for office and serving their communities,” you wrote, “more people debating, engaging and voting; not more people waving placards on the sidelines.”
Quite so. But being the placard-waving sort, I have a cynical and corrosive tendency to mistrust the claims ministers make about themselves. Like you, I believe opinions should be based on evidence. So I have decided to test your statements against the record.
Courage in politics is measured by the consistent application of principles.

Ah, using a metric with an emotion. Interesting line of attack…

The website TheyWorkForYou.com records votes on key issues since 2001. It reveals that you voted “very strongly for the Iraq war”, “very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war” and “very strongly for replacing Trident” (“very strongly” means an unbroken record). You have voted in favour of detaining terror suspects without charge for 42 days, in favour of identity cards and in favour of a long series of bills curtailing the freedom to protest. There’s certainly consistency here, though it is not clear what principles you are defending.

While I don’t necessarily agree with Blears’ stance, they would be in support of the Iraq war, concluding British deployment there before having a post mortem, in support of Trident and in support of a particular view of the security situation in the UK. Just because you don’t share the principles doesn’t mean they’re not principles.

Other threads are harder to follow. In 2003, for instance, you voted against a fully elected House of Lords and in favour of a chamber of appointed peers. In 2007, you voted for a fully elected House of Lords.

Here is the first problem with Monbiot’s argument. People’s opinions can, legitimately, change over time. In 2003 and 2007, Blears also voted to scrap the Lords entirely  and, presumably, was convinced in the intervening period that, if a unicameral system was not an option, a fifty-fifty split was the best option.

You have served without public complaint in a government which has introduced the minimum wage but blocked employment rights for temporary and agency workers; which talked of fiscal prudence but deregulated the financial markets; which passed the Climate Change Act but approved the construction of a third runway at Heathrow; which spoke of an ethical foreign policy but launched an illegal war in which perhaps a million people have died. Either your principles, by some remarkable twists of fate, happen to have pre-empted every contradictory decision this government has taken, or you don’t possess any.

I will be the first to admit that the Labour government has made some grievous errors. However, there are two fundamental problems with the arguments Monbiot puts in those paragraphs. Firstly, although I and Monbiot might disagree, there is no necessary contradiction between minimum wage & temporary agency workers’ rights or between fiscal prudence & financial deregulation1. Monbiot forgets that the government gestalt considered the war on Iraq not only a good idea but a moral imperative. There is hence no contradiction. The situation with the third runway is more tenuous, but not fatally so if you assume that the carbon emissions are maintained.

You remained silent while the government endorsed the kidnap and the torture of innocent people; blocked a ceasefire in Lebanon and backed a dictator in Uzbekistan who boils his prisoners to death. You voiced no public concern while it instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop the corruption case against BAE, announced a policy of pre-emptive nuclear war, signed a one-sided extradition treaty with the United States and left our citizens to languish in Guantánamo Bay. You remained loyal while it oversaw the stealthy privatisation of our public services and the collapse of Britain’s social housing programme, closed hundreds of post offices and shifted taxation from the rich to the poor. What exactly do you stand for Hazel, except election?

The only consistent political principle I can deduce from these positions is slavish obedience to your masters. TheyWorkForYou sums up your political record thus: “Never rebels against their party in this parliament.” Yours, Hazel, is the courage of the sycophant, the courage to say yes.

And your article is a ‘tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / signifying nothing2‘. Voting against the government means leaving the government in the system we have in place at the moment. It is entirely possible that Blears has opposed particular decisions but has been in agreement with the bulk of them and therefore felt it worthwhile to stay within government. This could be called the Short defence or, if you’re not being cynical, pragmatism. After all, The Guardian runs adverts from travel companies and yet Monbiot takes, albeit indirectly, the thirty pieces of carbon.

Let me remind you just how far your political “guts” have carried you. You are temporarily protected by the fact that the United Kingdom, unlike other states, has not yet incorporated the Nuremberg principles into national law. If a future government does so, you and all those who remained in the cabinet on 20 March 2003 will be at risk of prosecution for what the Nuremberg tribunal called “the supreme international crime”. This is defined as the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression”. Robin Cook, a man of genuine political courage, put his conscience ahead of his career and resigned. What did you do?

Will you be issuing a writ against Clare Short? I would add that the legality of the war is contested, not that presence of legality affects its being a good or bad idea.

It seems to me that someone of your principles would fit comfortably into almost any government. All regimes require people like you, who seem to be prepared to obey orders without question. Unwavering obedience guarantees success in any administration. It also guarantees collaboration in every atrocity in which a government might engage. The greatest thing we have to fear in politics is the cowardice of politicians.

Actually, I’d have said it was either “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”3 or the cumulative effect of a lack of political education and the mendacity of the tabloids leading to poor decision-making because of the over-importance of certain totemic issues and the lack of appreciation of the complexity of government.

You demanded evidence that consultations and citizens’ juries have been rigged. You’ve got it. In 2007, the high court ruled that the government’s first consultation on nuclear power was “seriously flawed” and “unlawful”. It also ruled that the government must commission an opinion poll. The poll the government launched was reviewed by the Market Research Standards Board. It found that “information was inaccurately or misleadingly presented, or was imbalanced, which gave rise to a material risk of respondents being led towards a particular answer”.
As freedom of information requests made by Greenpeace reveal, the consultation over the third runway at Heathrow used faked noise and pollution figures. It was repeatedly pre-empted by ministers announcing that the runway would be built. Nor did the government leave anything to chance when it wanted to set up giant health centres, or polyclinics, run by GPs. As Dr Tony Stanton of the Londonwide Local Medical Committees has pointed out, “a week before a £1m consultation on polyclinics and hospitals by NHS London closed, London’s 31 primary care trusts were issued with instructions on setting up polyclinic pilots and GP-led health centres”. Consultations elsewhere claimed that there was no need to discuss whether or not new health centres were required, as the principle had already been established through “extensive national level consultation exercises”. But no such exercises had taken place; just a handful of citizens’ juries engaging a total of a thousand selected people and steered by government ministers. Those who weren’t chosen had no say.

So your problem is with citizens’ juries? I can see that, to be honest. Unfortunately, the corrosive effect of the media (tabloids rather than broadsheets) gives people a biased set of facts, making it hard to do surveys; equally, surveys can be rather self-selecting as people with a bone to pick will be represented disproportionately.

Fixes like this might give you some clues about why more people are not taking part in politics. I believe there is a vast public appetite for re-engagement, but your government, aware of the electoral consequences, has shut us out. It has reneged on its promise to hold a referendum on electoral reform. It has blocked a referendum on the European treaty, ditched the regional assemblies, used Scottish MPs to swing English votes, sustained an unelected House of Lords, eliminated almost all the differences between itself and the opposition. You create an impenetrable political monoculture, then moan that people don’t engage in politics.

There is a problem with our polity. It’s caused by a mix of factors. Politicians of all sides are riding on the tiger’s back in that attacking the system will end up reducing their ability to change it and, I’m afraid, Paul Flynn is not going to change things by himself. By over-simplifying the problems and making it pretty abundantly clear that whatever people from the government say will be met by unwarranted skepticism, articles like Monbiot’s open letter make reform harder.

It is precisely because I can picture something better that I have become such a cynical old git. William Hazlitt remarked that: “Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.” You, Hazel, have helped to reduce our political choices to a single question: whether to laugh through our tears or weep through our laughter.

I’ll put you down as a ‘don’t know’, shall I?

Edit 1623: Tom Harris and Hopi Sen weigh in.

xD.

1 – PFI would have been a better line of attack
2 – Hamlet V v
3 – Eisenhower’s Farewell Address

The bully pulpit, or, why I’m Ben Goldacre

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Teddy Roosevelt referred to the Presidency of the USA as a ‘bully pulpit‘. He used the former word in the (Famous Five) sense of ‘bully for you’. In other words, it’s a great platform from which to promote an idea or ideology. Any elected representative can, eventually, be removed from office in a reasonably-functioning democracy. In the USA, the occupancy of the bully pulpit is limited to eight years. However, the Presidency of the United States is not the only bully pulpit; many others have no check or balance from an electorate, reality or vague sense of decency to contain them.

Enter, stage left, Jeni Barnett. Jeni has a radio programme on LBC and used it to suggest that the MMR triple vaccination was unsafe. While my understanding is that the overwhelming consensus is that the MMR jab is not only safe but a very good idea (CDC, IoM, NHS) and that there is, at least, a prima facie conflict of interest in the originator of the research, Barnett has the right to broadcast these opinions, even if they do contribute to declining rates of measles vaccinations. This right is contigent, IMHO, on a sensible provision in copyright law (based, I believe, on earlier Common Law principles) called fair dealing that allows you to criticise and review what people have broadcast (CDPA 1988 s 30 as amended). In other words, the fact that you’re on the radio doesn’t give you immunity from people pointing out your errors.

Enter, stage right, Ben ‘Bad Science‘ Goldacre. Goldacre posted, with some pithy remarks, the relevant bit of Barnett’s remarks; he has since removed the audio because of a legal threat (ish) from LBC. You can read Goldacre’s reactions here; Barnett has thoughts here; interestingly, that particular page no longer appears in her archive or on the front page of her blog.

You can read more about all of this, including some interesting insights on the legal position, over at the Wardman Wire.

Three things come out of this. Firstly, given that Wakefield’s research has been gutted by the peer review process and that the peer review process has consistently supported the safety and efficacy of the MMR jab, I am not minded to give much credence to Barnett’s comments; I just hope that other people do the same.

Secondly, as Goldacre puts it,

without being too Billy Bragg about it all: this is a law that apparently works a bit better for wealthy people.

Thirdly, quite a lot of the denizens of the internet in general and blogosphere in particular get really annoyed when freedom of speech is impinged upon. They’ll have a robust debate with positions they don’t agree with, but if you don’t play by the rules, they kick up a stink that can bring you a lot of negative publicity. The Times has picked it up as did Radio 4’s Start the Week and there’s an EDM in the offing from Paul Flynn MP. It would seem that people need to learn about the Streisand Effect.

You may insert the usual hand-wringing rant about the ‘meedja’ here.

xD.

London papers

Posted on by David Landon Cole

London needs greater media diversity.

I’m going to explain the situation, why it’s bad and then propose a solution.

The Evening Standard has something close to a monopolistic position on London news. It is, as we know, the only paid-for London newspaper. Metro, London Lite and thelondonpaper are meant to be read on the way to or from work and are entertainment – hence the huge amount of celebrity gossip – rather than news. Some local papers – the Camden New Journal, for instance – are pretty good, but some areas don’t have any decent, local paper.

I would also say that the Evening Standard focuses (if I may pinch Ken Livingstone’s phrase) on the area around the wine bars and brothels of Westminster and, now, City Hall; it deals with trivia and minutiae. My objections to the Evening Standard‘s position are not because it is right-wing, obsessed with Ken or a bit tabloid. Rather, it is that they are unchallenged in their position. My objection to the newspaper market in London is that it leaves great swathes of GLA and borough politics untouched.

If we move away from the print media, the situation is not good. ITV London News has nothing of the politics of the capital, but only stories of interest. BBC News is, I feel, slightly better but still pretty woeful. Channel Four News and Sky News don’t cover the capital other than in passing. Moving to the online world, I want to weep. The ES‘s main website is thisislondon.co.uk, an entertainment guide, where showbiz comes above news. Its news site, standard.co.uk or thisislondon.co.uk/standard, is very much a second-string site; do a search for Evening Standard and you’ll see that only thisislondon.co.uk is anywhere to be seen. BBC London News just doesn’t have many stories.
In particular, I wonder how many people could name, say, three members of the Assembly. I wonder how many people know what the GLA does and doesn’t do.

I do want to flag three blogs in particular – Dave Hill’s London: Mayor and More; the Tory Troll; and Boris Watch – for their good coverage. While much of their content is great, it is not enough; I hope my reasons why will become clear later on.

All this together effectively gives the Evening Standard a bully-pulpit. While Teddy Roosevelt meant ‘bully’ in the positive, now-arcane sense, I fear that the Evening Standard does not quite match the idea of “a terrific platform from which to persuasively advocate an agenda”. (C-Span Congressional Glossary).

There has been at least one attempt at direct competition with the ES in the past; Bob Maxwell’s London Daily News. Suffice to say, it failed. By resurrecting the Evening News and slashing prices to 5p, Associated were able to stop the London Daily News. The situation now is different; for one, the freesheet model has matured. I’d add that with the initials ‘LDN’, a London Daily News might fare better after Lily Allen’s song.

Equally, I don’t think everyone wants all celebrity news, all the time; I do not want a ‘Lite’ newspaper. The World, Stephen Glover’s proposed, new compact picks up on that idea; see the Wikipedia article for more information.

There is room and need for competition for the broader (rather than just middle market tabloid) London news market. Despite its attempts to move upmarket, ES’s news coverage is pretty poor. It doesn’t cover borough politics and only lightly covers the Mayor and GLA.

However, the ES retains several advantages. One is brand recognition; another is its distribution network. As an aside, I wonder what effect all those anti-Ken placards had in the run-up to the election; at any rate, those placards and the orange vans are a lot of advertising around the city. I don’t think it’s too much to say that the ES and its sellers are part of the street-scape of London; I would say, though, that the distinctive yellows and purples of London Lite and thelondonpaper, together with the muted annoyance at being attacked with freesheets at every station in zone one, have become part of the street-scape, too.

This leads me onto an area where I think the ES has singularly failed to capitalise; the online realm.
If I can take the issue of brand recognition first, ES, largely because of its decision to run as thisislondon.co.uk online, doesn’t have the on- or off- line, perceived web presence of some other outlets. Much as I like it, neither does Londonist – which isn’t really a news site – or thelondondailynews.com (no relation, I believe, to Cap’n Bob’s paper of the same name).

The other devolved administrations – Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, with respectively three, one-and-three-quarter and five million inhabitants – have their own competitive newspaper markets and, I am given to understand, the national papers have regional editions for the nations. London (eight million), effectively the fifth home nation and the economic, cultural and political centre of our country, does not have that and suffers as a result.

I believe that better news coverage and debate about London – effectively the fifth home nation – would be a good thing. The question is how.

In keeping with Guardian America and Guardian Weekly as successful sub-sets of the Guardian brand, I’d like to propose Guardian London.

Its primary issues could be City Hall, including the Mayor, Assembly and executive arms; London beyond zones one and two; transport; the boroughs; the City; and informing people about the reality of London today. Over an eight-week cycle, there could be information on the council politics of the different boroughs, grouped as four at a time. To begin with, there could be a guide – one a week – to each of the boroughs. It should also look at what might be called the civil society of each borough.

The arrival of Crossrail is one particular issue that deserves attention that the existing media offer singularly fails to address. To take just one station as an example: Tottenham Court Road. Crossrail allows for the development of a better, larger, more accessible station but the Astoria and Sin will go and the Paolozzi murals on the platforms need to be maintained. I’m sure there are similar issues at just about every station on the Crossrail line and will be in future on the Crossrail 2/Chelney line. All we will get will be a glitzy, CGI, double-page spread when it’s far too late to do anything about the changes as the station is about to open. Instead of the newspapers giving us news and comment to allow us to form opinions, they’re giving us re-cycled press releases.

It would do well to do profiles of the main people in London politics; the Mayor, various deputy Mayors, GLA members, people who run and are on the boards of the MPA, TfL, LDA, LFEPA and any future authorities for waste, recycling, education, skills, the environment and planning.
Initially, it could operate a purely online outfit. Journalists need not be retained but could be remunerated on the same basis as CiF. If successful, it could perhaps grow to a weekly supplement to the print edition in London, and perhaps the south-east, on Saturdays.

If we look at the blogosphere and social media, the combination of individual blogs, group blogs, media blogs like Comment is Free and Coffee House, Facebook and so on, we see a potentially powerful combination for attracting people’s attention and engaging them in the London polis.

The trick would be to attract people to local goings-on – whether campaigns over a particular issue, calls for involvement, bouncing around ideas or just keeping people in the loop – by cross-pollinating from the main Guardian. There are all manner of local campaigns, organised on the internet, that act on different facets of the same issue that should be given greater, public exposure. An example might be the Better 172 Now campaign to improve the 172 bus route; I’m sure there are similar issues that ‘citizen journalists’ could report that would be of interest to people who don’t live on the Brockley-St Paul’s route. At the moment, they are too fragmented.

Local papers often suffer from a lack of critical mass; the use of the Guardian’s existing online community and brand could help increase the traffic, as (dare I say it) could its more user-friendly website.

Because people move from one part of the city to another on a regular basis, they are going to be interested in what’s going on away from where they live, whether it’s because they go there for work, socialising or recreation. Equally, many ‘local’ issues become London-wide, in no small part because of the re-institution of strategic, City-wide governance. There is the need and the potential for a new entrant to London news.

xD.

UPDATE: An edited version of this post appeared on Liberal Conspiracy.

Blog Nation part 2: qu’est-que c’est le blog?

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Last night’s Blog Nation gathering at the Guardian’s offices was interesting. Two main things came out of it for me.

1. There’s no such thing as blogging

Or rather, there’s no one thing called blogging. It’s a clever piece of software, coupled with the internet, that allows people to do different things. Just ‘political blogs’ covers sites that explicitly politically campaign and organise, discussion areas for groups and communities, sites for self-promotion, personal musings, ranting, communication with interest groups of all shapes and sizes and more besides. This is exacerbated by Labour being in government, meaning that there is no common enemy on which to focus. Even if, though, the Tories were in power, they would not be the focus of even the majority of blogs.

Until people move away from the idea that there is only one effective model of blogging – the trivia of day-to-day politics – the medium will not achieve its full potential. That conflict was highlighted in a panel discussion with Sadie Smith, Kate Belgrave, Zohra Moosa and Cath Elliott when various people raised the disconnect between feminist political blogs and other political blogs. While I don’t doubt that there is a disconnect, I don’t think it’s unique to feminist blogs; as I pointed out, there are lots of blog communities that focus on an abstract issue that have varying amounts of engagement with the generalist blogs.

In terms of making a political difference, a blog that only reaches twenty people may have as much impact as a blog a thousand times as large if those twenty people happen to be party activists who feel it gives them a connection to their local councillor (or whatever) as it can help to improve responsive campaigning and keeps those twenty motivated to knock on doors and hand out leaflets.

A point made by Mark Hanson of Labour Home was that all this new, social media may herald a return of sorts to the halcyon days of town hall meetings; unlike the television, it allows for responses. I do hope so; it strikes me that we’re not there yet.

All the above feeds into commenting. As we all know, there are a lot of unpleasant and fatuous comments out there. This feeds off and gives rise to the somewhat combative, adversarial feel of contemporary UK blogging. For my part, I feel this to be negative as, although there is a place for strong words, it seems to be drowning out engagement on a lot of blogs. This comes from the preponderance of the aforementioned style of blogging.

The indomitable Dan Hardie made a point that was picked up on by Mr Phil ‘No2ID‘ and others; if online campaigning is the visible tip of the iceberg, the greater part – offline campaigning – is there under the waterline. I agree with them; emails, websites, blogs, YouTube and the rest are the tools, not the objective.

My blog is a generalist blog. I hope that I have not given the impression that there is something inherently wrong with that style of blogging; that is neither my intention nor my belief. However, there is nothing inherently right either.

2. There’s no such thing as the left

There’s no such thing as the right, either. I dislike the use of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ as they are, at best, of low descriptive and predictive value. I would go as far to say that thinking in terms of a single axis is damaging for debate in the country, but that is a theme for another day. What was clear was that at this gathering of the liberal/left/progressive/’various people against nasty things’ caucus, there was not a single, unifying leitmotif. You might have been able to find twenty issues that four-fifths of people would have agreed on fourt-fifths of the time, and you would certainly have found groups with greater correlations than that. There will be particular issues and particular campaigns that bring people together from time to time, but to say that there was harmony and concord would simply be inaccurate. If the progressive (I can’t think of a better word) section of the British polity is going to effectively use the online domain, it must remain diverse and, crucially, campaign effectively offline as well.

I would tend to say that the same is true of bloggers who wouldn’t have fitted in at last night’s gathering. There was talk of the ‘right’ being a monolithic entity on the blogosphere (I think the description of choice was ‘pyramid’). Given the range between UKIP, libertarians, wets, dries, Tories, Young Turks, Englishers and so on, I don’t think that the description will hold (if it even does now) once their common enemy – Labour – is out of government.

My thanks to Liberal Conspiracy and the Guardian for organising it and to everyone there for the pleasant evening I had. There are some write-ups and so on over at LC, and I hope more will be appearing soon.

xD.