Blogs and blogging. Is there a future?

What is blogging?

Desperate attention seeking behaviour from lonely nerds sitting in cramped bed-sits? Words of wisdom from the unheard sages of the world? The new journalism? The greatest revolution since Caxton invented movable type? The latest fad doomed to extinction by Twitter's better fitness profile? None of the above?

I know what THIS blog is and it's been explained before. I quite enjoy writing; it gives me something to do in the morning after I wake up and before going to work (it takes me ages to wake up enough to face the journey to the office); it's a quiet past-time for those nights when I cannot sleep; it's useful exercise for the few neurons not swimming in pools of alcohol. I have no desire to be the most hit blog in the blogiverse and if it amuses the few who do read it, I am well content.

However I came across something the other day which made me think. A blog written by a journalist. (You could tell because it had 'Writer and journalist' at the top:) The post I hit was one which was moaning about the fact this his trade union was so reactionary and hide bound when it came to new media. Unwilling to embrace the whole new world of Web2 and stuck in a world view that was doomed to die as much as the print and broadcast media all this wonderful new media were going to replace. All well and good and everyone's entitled to their own opinion. I personally doubt that print media will die as long as reading newspapers on line is as tiring on the eyes as being an IT Manager is or until someone gets the internet into a tube tunnel. However, be that as it may.

Someone else had come across this blog and had emailed the link to someone who worked for said trade union and headed up a department which was being implicitly criticised. The subject line of the inbound email was, to be generous, less than complementary. The aforementioned someone clicked on the link and read the blog. End of story.

Not quite. Because what appeared the following day on the blog was the subject line of the email and the email address (along with a demonstration of just how clever this blogger is; knowing how to read a blog log, knowing how to do a reverse lookup to find the domain name from the IP address, that kind of thing) and it implied that the less than complimentary remark in the subject line of the email came from them.

Now this kind of thing happens all the time on blogs; poking fun, making minor mischief, insults etc but it got me thinking. Most people coming across, say, this blog would not lend it too much credence; if I said black is white they wouldn't necessarily believe me unless they shared the same view. However most people who read what used to be known as the broadsheets or some of the less dumbed down magazines still on the whole believe that what is presented is at least relatively objective journalism. After all, no one seriously believes that the war in Afghanistan isn't happening, that Lehman Brothers didn't collapse (even if you don't know anyone who worked there), that the global economy isn't in meltdown, that George Bush is still in the White House running the US. No, on the whole, you still generally believe what you read unless it's in the Daily Sport or the National Enquirer. Why?

Because you believe that for all the press barons' money grubbing schemes, the journalists writing the stories are still trying to be relatively objective even though politically or economically they may need to veer towards the 'party line' of the newspaper or the magazine. So when a blog advertises itself as being written by a journalist isn't it being implied by the writer that this is relevant, otherwise why mention it? And if you are meant to think that it is relevant isn't it also implied that you should read it as you would a newspaper, believing that there was at least a smidgin of journalistic ethics in there somewhere and that, in the main, it was being objective?

It seems to me that unless you apply at least some of the criteria for 'conventional' journalism, such as checking sources, avoiding rascist, sexist, homophobic remarks, ensuring that what you write reads well and is grammatically correct, to so called 'new journalism' then it's no better than this blog and will further undermine what little credibility journalism still has. It's no good saying it's 'live' and interactive and therefore has different rules, it doesn't; because the primary piece is still there tomorrow and can be read by a new collection of readers. In this particular case, not checking could have had serious repurcussions for the individual concerned who could have been hauled over the coals for seemingly inappropriate behaviour. And a recourse? I would bet my last sou that any attempt at a formal complaint would simply have prompted: "It's only a blog".

You can't have it both ways. Either it's journalism, in which case at least make the minimum effort to apply some standards if you want it to be taken seriously, or it's not, in which case stop pretending. After all, no-one takes the tabloids seriously in the UK anymore because we all know that they abandonned ethics a long time ago and the poor hacks in front of the screen are only doing what we all do, earning a crust, the best way we can. Does anyone seriously advocating the kind of 'new' journalism here want that to happen?

On a slightly different note, but prompted by the same blog; have you ever wondered why people in trade unions often view those organisations as being run by people 'appointed' to do so? As though somehow it's like a government department and yet they're some of the most democratic organisations in the world. Elections every year, usually; major decisions and policy making only made by elected officers; getting to tell the leadership every year that they're a bunch of wankers and are impeding the march of International Socialism. If you don't agree with the policy, try and change it, make the arguments but at a time and place where your arguments can be heard, countered or even agreed. Don't just whinge, do something that might actually make a difference!

Any democracy is only as good as the people who engage in it!