Irish Times Blogging Piece Stirs Up A Storm
An article in the Irish Times technology section by Robin O’Brien-Lynch stirred up a storm of controversy in the Irish blogosphere. Unlike the usual Irish Times technology section article, this one was relevant to technologists and to the general public. And it marked a turning point - an Irish Times journalist actually answered questions and explained an article. Most of the time, the Irish Times technology section goes unnoticed by the web because of the Pay Per View subscription model that the Irish times introduced a few years ago. On the web, only the Irish Times subscribers can see the article. However it was one of the most commented upon tech articles of recent years. It was pushed out of the limelight by another Irish Times controversy. The Irish Times technology section is a one to two page section that appears in the Irish Times newspaper business supplement on Fridays.
According to Robin O’Brien-Lynch, the concept of the article was to see how American political advocacy via blogs could be applied to an Irish General Election. The US Presidential Election was concerned with the election of a president. An Irish General Election, by comparison, has many local aspects at play. And with local aspects comes local politics. That means local blogging with potentially small audiences. It is the kind of article that fits in well with the Irish Times technology section. But from an editorial point of view, the article was flawed as it was trying to compare two very different events. The title for the article “Lots of Irish blogs but few talking about Irish matters” was wrong as well but that was a case of poor editing rather than journalistic inaccuracy.
The Irish Times technology section is in a peculiar position - it is essentially a magazine within a supplement within a newspaper. The old model was that the newspapers reported the news and the magazines did the analysis. That was the old model - the highly competitive market means that a newspaper has to try and cover the analysis market, the opinion market, the news side of the market and product placement/review. The Irish Times technology section does not really cover the news side of things - that is more of a daily issue and technology news has to fight for space with other, more important news. It has bought in news items from Reuters. It has a high-profile techie column from Danny O’Brien of Need To Know fame. It has a weekly column, “Net Results”, from Karlin Lillington. The rest is generic Irish news and commentary that does not make it into the daily newspaper.
Bernie Goldbach makes some very interesting observations on O’Brien-Lynch’s article and as yet, the comments posted on various blogs by O’Brien-Lynch don’t go far enough in addressing them. But they provide enough starting points for a few good articles for the Irish Times and it would be very interesting to see if O’Brien-Lynch will be allowed to follow them up in a series of articles.
The blogosphere has evolved almost in parallel with the normal web. The normal Irish web is business orientated and on search engines, these sites tend to dominate the search results often at the expense of blogs.
The IT article is wrong in considering the Irish blogosphere as being in its infancy. Prior to the advent of blogging software, many bloggers would have had their own personal websites. The blogging software enabled them to update their sites more efficiently than publishing every update with a copy of Frontpage. Many of these sites would have been personal sites on ISPs or free webhosting. Many of these personal websites would never have appeared high in the search results either. That critical evolutionary leap was missed in the article.
The dismissal of the “blogroll” and “who’s reading me” is revealing. Is a newspaper’s obsession with sales figures any less neurotic? Why does the IT include pictures of its columnists? Why should anyone consider the opinion of an Irish Times columnist to be better or worse than that of others? Unlike the bland figures of a sales report, the “who’s reading me” section indicates real readers as opposed to sales.
But more importantly blogging changes the balance of technology journalism. Which would you rate higher - the opinion of a technologist on technology or the opinion of someone with little or no technological background? Many technologists have blogs and comment lucidly and accurately on trends in technology but their blogs are often not about technology in general.
There is something quite terrifying at the heart of blogging for journalists - it provides real feedback from the audience beyond the usual stuff that appears in the “letters to the editor” page. It makes journalists answerable and it can be quite a reality check for columnists to have their mistakes highlighted and their articles questioned. Prior to the web and blogging, a one way process. Blogging added the missing element and changed journalism into a conversation with the reader. FMK explores this change.
What limited the impact of the Irish Times’ blogging article was that the IT is a subscription site - had it been a publically accessible site, the impact and commentary would probably have been greater. Despite this limited readership, the article was quoted all over the Irish blogsphere. O’Brien-Lynch referred to the insularity and backslapping nature of the Irish blogosphere. But this is a case of a journalist completely misunderstanding the nature of the web and blogging. The web is not a newspaper. It is a complex, interlinked set of sites. The blogosphere is a set of conversations in asynchronous time.
A few weeks ago, I read an interesting paper on journalism during the dot.bomb period. In it, one web journalist claimed that reader feedback beyond the usual corrections should not be allowed. One of the recent additions on that site was a blog. Ironically it is probably the most genuine and original content on that site. Blogs and their readership act as a quality filter where like-minded people can provide interesting ideas and commentary and pointers. The danger of blogging for journalists, especially those covering technology, is that they are surplus to requirements it is possible to get the information often from people who are the real experts. It is that democratisation of journalism that is a far bigger story than whether US political advocacy methods can be applied to Ireland.
Written by John McCormac on February 17th, 2005 with
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