If you don’t know what #picamp is, then take a look at this. It was an unconference about how to improve politics, organised by Slugger O’Toole. We had our own session about reasoning and critical thinking in politics for Belfast Skeptics, you can read about that here. The whole day was really good overall, but I had some reservations about the session after lunch, which was a panel-based discussion apparently about why old-media journalism p0wns blogging and is full of win. Or something. Anyway, I didn’t taken many notes so I can’t remember completely the content of the talk, but it was frustrating.
The plenary felt like a bitching session about blogs and blogging, which was really bloody pointless. Ideas like “bloggers can’t be held accountable” and “bloggers don’t check their facts” and the notion that news media will survive without changing its ways are all seriously short-sighted and foolish. As one participant (possibly Will Perrin) pointed out, the panelists were all tarring all bloggers with the same brush, while suggesting that the integrity of journalists were second-to-none. After this was suggested, the debate was altered somewhat to take this into account, but it’s a key point: there are very few investigative journalists left in the mainstream media (MSM). Similarly, the overwhelming majority of blogs are not worth printing.
But there are some real gems there. Maman Poulet and The Story are two examples of that. It was claimed that bloggers don’t hang on to stories and continue pecking away at them, but that’s utter crap. You can easily say the same about MSM; the vast majority will run stories that are relevant to the moment and then move on. This was addresses in the discussion; it’s a huge financial commitment for a newspaper to release a journalist to spend a few days or weeks working on a story that might lead to nothing. Bloggers, on the other hand, tend to earn a grand total of zero cent from their blogs. Most of them are just works of passion and a desire to stop being fooled by bullshit. Look at Tuppenceworth and their probing in to Your Country Your Call. If you think that the MSM is going to survive in the future, you ought to have a better plan than just holding tight and slagging off blogs.
There shouldn’t be a “them versus us” debate there. There is no debate, the Internet and blogs are going to exists. They’re going to get news out faster than MSM can ever do and they’ll do a far better job at “niche” news than any non-speciality journalist will. Bloggers are competing with MSM and MSM shouldn’t feel the need to compete with bloggers. When I read a blog, I want opinion. When I read a newspaper, I don’t want opinion. I want fact. One problem is that newspapers are so swamped with opinion pieces, celebrity scandal and partisan news reporting that I don’t bother reading any of that crap. I also think that newspapers are a huge waste of paper. They’ve a shelf-life of, what, 12 hours at most? If I get a tablet device, I’ll probably read more papers, ’cause that way I can digest the stories easier.
So, there we go. The discussion annoyed me. I can see where the panellists where coming from; their industry is changing rapidly and in a way that is totally out of their control. Fear is gripping newsrooms around the world. Lashing out at the “bloggosphere” won’t help that.
Comment below to give your opinion.
~ Conor
Stuckinthemilli.eu 