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September 11, 2008
In defending the watchdog for democracy role for journalism in an op-ed in The Australian Mark Day takes a swipe at blogs. He says:
There was a time a few years ago when blogging was seen by some as the magic potion to sustain journalism. It was said to be the ultimate in publishing democracy: a means by which everybody could have their say, everybody could contribute to the great community debates, and we would all become citizen journalists. Well, it hasn’t happened, and it’s not likely to.I was taken by an expression used in an editorial in The Australian a month or so ago that observed that blogging had all the intellectual value of graffiti on a toilet door.
Now Day does qualify this by acknowledging that some blogs have value and potency—he mentions the Baghdad blogger Salam Pax during the early days of the Iraq war; but he adds that he cannot see how blogging does much other than add a forum for discussion to newspaper sites. No argument is offered for that reduction of blogs to newspaper bogs.
Presumably the majority of independent blogs are assumed to be equivalent to graffiti on a toilet door. Again there is no argument. Day then says:
I have used blogging as a convenient channel for readers to comment on or respond to this column. It has, in the way that letters to the editor did in an earlier age, led to some interesting points of view being aired, but a disturbingly high proportion has consisted of abuse, ridicule or allegations of bias or irrelevancy directed at me or others who post comments.
That ignores the existence of independent blogs and weblogs offering a forum for discussion of public issues in liberal democracy. These, however, are not Day's concern. His concern is newspapers:
Rather than wasting our efforts on blogging, I think editors should focus on creating news: revealing information about the communities in which they work, setting agendas for discussion, reporting events figuratively over the back fence, and using this to add value to the essentially free flow of breaking news and information accessible virtually anywhere....It makes sense to me that more newspapers will follow the lead of The Philadelphia Inquirer by reverting to a model where the news stories it breaks appear first in print. Why, if there is value attached to revealing these stories, should they be given away first on the net?
Fair enough. However, breaking news is not the same as journalism playing a watchdog role in democracy. That role requires investigation (in depth analysis) and interpretation---or commentary--which is what the better independent blogs offer.
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Ignorance is bliss. Send him a copy of Antony Loewenstein's "The Blogging Revolution' or better still suggest he buy one.