blogs

There is a fair bit of commentary around at the moment about the state of blogging. to be fair most of it is in the tech world where there is a sort of consensus that the golden age of blogging, at least from a tech perspective, is over:

The reasons, in brief: many top blogs have sold out; staff turnover saw “star” voices slip off the radar; younger audiences like social networking more; and advertising revenue is increasingly hard to get at.

All the reasons given are true, but they’re not reasons to believe that a golden age has passed. They’re phenomena in their own right, each with its own story, and only the last presenting a barrier to entry for newcomers. Epochal change makes for an epic narrative, but all this adds up to a simpler truth: media is a tough game and you won’t get far by copying what other people did years ago.

I have always said that New Zealand lags about 5 years behind the rest of the world and blogging here is no different. We are just now catching up with the advent of bloggers commentators that has been prevalent int he US and UK for at least 6 years.

Some don’t agree that the golden age is over. I’m with them:

“There are still plenty of people who love to write– not just share, Tweet and comment– for a living, and blogs are still the best platform for that. In many ways, professional blogging is just getting started. It’s a time when new entrants are jumping into the field with bold, fresh ideas, standing on the shoulders of the blogging giants that came before, taking a second stab at reinventing the new media landscape.”

In the 6 years I have been blogging there have been many blogs and bloggers not many of us stick around. There is a reason for that, it is bloody hard work. Your critics are instantaneous and not many can take the constant criticism and especially the nasty hate mail. I keep every email and one day I will publish them all. It will make a book of hate all by itself. This comment at Boing Boing though sums up blogging for me:

There was never a golden age of blogging, just a golden age of mainstream interest in what it all meant. Don’t worry about it; opportunity does not knock but once. You need obsession, a work ethic, and an uncommon voice. That’s tough, but that’s all. The rest is counting the hours, and we’ve all got plenty of those.

So readers what do you think…Has blogging done it’s dash?

Clear cut nominations for this category.

Red Alert: The blog of Labour MPs, tightly moderated, dissenting views are rigorously edited or deleted. All the moderators tell out right lies when altering, moderating or deleting comments.

No Right Turn: The shouty blog of Malcolm Harbrow, professional student and pretend liberal. He turned off comments years ago because like all shouty socialists and control freaks he cannot tolerate dissent. Seriously prone to Key Derangement Syndrome.

The Standard: Janet Wilson labeled them as “hard left rhetoric rendered [them] blind to any rational coverage.” Tightly moderated, rabid to the extreme and blinkered. Mostly anonymous but Lynn Pretice thinks he is the worlds best programmer and quaintly still refers to himself as a “sysop”. Perhaps the most seriously afflicted with Key Derangement Syndrome. Ironically they describe almost any blog other than their own as “the sewer”.

Tumeke: Used to be a decent blog when mostly written by Tim Selwyn. During his stint at Her Majesty pleasure it was taken over by blow-hard Martyn Bradbury. Is way more shouty than no Right Turn and prone to serious bouts of Key Derangement Syndrome. Phoebe Fletcher is the sole voice of reason at the blog but her posts are almost always tl;dr.

 Loading ...

There you readers, fill yer boots.

So many awful blogs to choose from, the largely anonymous cowards at The Standard, Red Alert, Malcolm Harbrow’s No Right Turn where he focuses on the first part of his handle Idiot/Savant.

Then there is the failed horse trainer/plumber from Ruakaka, Todd, who has a blog called The Jackal. Karl du Fresne describes it thus:

 “A jackal is a cowardly cur that skulks in the shadows. I can’t think of a blog that’s more appropriately named”

Public Address isn;t so much as bad, rather tedious. Pundit is the blog for unemployed journalists but does harbour Nicky Hager.

So many good political blogs to choose from for this award.

There is the old boring and formerly top blog, Kiwiblog. The acerbic Cactus Kate. Don’t forget Red Alert and their proxy blog The Standard. There is the boring mundanity of Public Address and the unemployed journalists club at Pundit as well.

Keeping Stock and Home paddock had a pretty good output as well.

Nominate away and don’t forget to give reasons as well. Note that only political blogs are eligible, silly photoblogs or blogs about gossipers aren’t included.

Since no one else will nominate them I will nominate Red Alert. You may ask why I would do that but I believe that it has been a very useful resource and will continue to be a very useful resource for other bloggers and media to use. Feel free to disagree, but I have indulged you all by accepting your other nominations so i think I can have a free pass in nominating this one.

via Boing Boing

Some people just don’t think through the consequences of their actions.

At Gawker, Brooklyn-based journalist Caitlin Curran explains how you could quickly go from being part of the downtrodden 99% to being part of the “no, really, unemployed and utterly fucked” contingent: your boss could see a photo of you holding up a sign at a protest and fire you the next day. Ms. Curran is the woman in the photo above, feature in two previous Boing Boing posts.

Andrew Sullivan shows the very real difference between the MSM and the blogosphere – the willingness of the bloggers to mock themselves for making mistakes.

via Andrew Sullivan

Interesting comments ont he demise of traditional media. Especially worth reading the link on democratizing effect of technology

We’re pretty much in a perma-recession, small banks are failing left and right, the biggest ones get bailed out, but the people who are in charge of the financial world–which is now optimized for algorithms, not people–are still burning $100 bills to light their Cohibas.

Isn’t this the kind of primordial soup that spawns an industry’s overhaul? I mean, people in my line of work got our asses handed to us by the democratizing effect of technology. Journalism used to be a few powerful people dictating what information you need to know, and now look at us. Blogs, twitter, well, I don’t need to rehash this old saw. Journalism was gutted by technology, in some cases for better, in some cases for worse.

Looneys seem to think that blogs like Whaleoil should be impartial. In a sense it is, I have a crack at anyone who does anything stupid including National MPs and office holders.

For some reason this is seen as bad, and a lot of prissy people think impartiality is the route to heaven or something equally moronic. These morons should think about the United Kingdom broadsheet market, where the Times, Telegraph, Independent, Observer and Guardian all have clear editorial perspectives and are well known for promoting causes they believe in, like getting Labour elected or thrown out depending on the paper. Similar blogs like The Daily Dish and Andrew Bolt likewise eschew impartiality and embrace partiality.

They are not beyond having a go at their nominal political allies either. The Telegraph is giving the Tories beating over their planning changes with their Hands off our Land Campaign

The media market world wide is being dominated by people who take sides. Boring impartiality is a fast path to extinction. If you don’t like the approach this blog takes, go and read something else.

Farrar posts about the sperm of people without souls being rejected at sperm-banks and then 2 days later the good little Fairfax repeater Stephanie Gardiner pipes up on Stuff with the exact same story.

The Herald on Sunday had four articles derived from social media or blogs.

I think the MSM model is broken.

from Mydeology

Phil Goff, future ambassador to Sierra Leone, is a failure-in-waiting. So get your frigging faces out there and start angling for the good spots, dammit.David Cunliffe and Carmel Sepuloni talk to me like an adult and make me feel like Labour has a plan. Be more like them. Stop letting your gap-toothed wonderdog lead you to certain failure with his ad-hoc policy making and unconfident quavering whiny non-sound bytes full of such gems as “it’s about fairness”, “um, it’s about fairness” and “well, it’s about fairness”.

If you really believe your own party’s rhetoric, try to win this election rather than the next one.