Gavo, you’d go to the opening of a bag of chips, you media whore you!

The Irish Times technology section is a peculiar position – it is essentially a magazine within a newspaper. The old model was that the newspapers reported the news and the magazines did the analysis. A better angle would be to examine the effect of blogging on the upcoming UK General Election as it has more in common with an Irish GE. But that would probably be drifting into the politics section of the IT.

The article is wrong in considering the Irish blogosphere as being in its infancy. Prior to the advent of blogging software, many of the current bloggers 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. They would never have appeared that highly in the search results either. But blogging software made web publishing easy and opened it up to wider participation. That evolutionary leap from static site to blog was missed.

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? And more importantly why should I consider the opinions of op-ed columnists to be better than those of others?

There is something terrifying at the heart of blogging for journalists – it provides real feedback from the audience. 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, journalism was a one way process. Blogging added the missing element and changed journalism into a conversation with the reader.

Blogs and their social networks act as a quality filter where like-minded people can provide interesting ideas and commentary and pointers. The danger for journalists, especially those covering technology, is that they are irrelevant when it is possible to get the information often from people who are the real experts and have their own blog. It is that democratisation of journalism that is a far bigger story than whether US political advocacy methods can be applied to Ireland.

Jaysus, you’re a big name dropper aren’t you! You’re not the only one who gets into the Palace of Westminster!

Boris Johnson has a blog but his appeal is entirely down to his bumbling, charming turn of phrase and ridiculously plummy accent. It just doesn’t work in text format.

But I would say they are working to some degree, but I guess that would depend on how you define a blog ‘working’.

looking at our nearest neighbour, the uk, i don’t think politician blogs are actually working there. the guardian is a good resource on this and is worth checking out, if you’re not familiar with the scene.

maryharney.blogspot.com

Friday, February 11, 2005

> DELICIOUS

Mmmm, had a fantastic breakfast today. A whole roasted wild boar washed down with 2 kilos of spuds and a slim-fast shake. Can’t wait for lunch when I’ll be solving a big problem in Ballymun by eating all the horses there.

and what about the real use of blogs in the latter stages of the election – where the main political blogs had virtually no independent voice and instead regurgitated the party’s line on whatever was the topic of the moment? many, many of the american blogs were nothing but party blogs. is that what robin things ireland needs, more ff blogs and more pd blogs and more fg blogs and more labour blogs, simply repeating the same old same old? if that is what robin thinks ireland needs then i think robin is in need of a wake-up call.

the point about irish blogs that robin misses is this: if something’s not being talked about, maybe it’s because that silence says more about the real attitude of many irish people to politics in this country. the irish times might think it fascinating enough to waste two or three pages a day on, but the reality of the situation, on the ground, among the people, is quite different. and i think that the irish blogs fairly reflect that. that’s the real lesson for irish politicos, not some lesson about how howard dean failed to convert a cyberpresence into electoral gain.

Just an observation.

I think the article fell short of its potential by failing to quote any Irish bloggers. There are articulate comments on several Irish blogs about the Dean experience, blogging from austere operating locations, censorship in blogs, remediation as part of online content, the technophobia at the TD level, and the fact that several early adopters of blogging now work inside two government departments where they have assisted in the roll-out of RSS and the smackdown of the e-mail attachment culture.

Some people are tired of being lectured about how to best do things by applying the American model. To insinuate there are clear-cut principles of best practise percolating from the Dean camp is to confuse readers–there’s plenty to talk about in Irish blogging without even mentioning Deaniacs. I know several constituency committee members who are working on an Alpha version of a mainstream political blog now and hope their work gets the green light before the end of the summer.

I read lots of Irish blogs every day and to be honest I rarely read the ones about Irish politics for my own personal pleasure. Like Laura said, I cannot imagine how interminably dull it would be if Irish bloggers didn’t talk about anything else.

there is also a another point missed and that is the existence of sites like p45 and boards, where local politics are discussed – those boards offer a dialogue, whereas a large number of blogs are nothing but monologue. yes, blogs encourage feedback by the comment button, but those comments don’t seem to offer the dialogue available on dicussion boards. and, of course, we can’t forget a site like politics.ie

and, one other point that needs to be addressed in criticising the content of irish blogs is the existence of other media. we are well served by national and uk papers, we have a pretty strong radio sector, and we have more free-to-air tv channels per capita than are to be found in some other countries. only occasionally will a story like the kevin myers distraction come along in which all those media outlets will offer same-same blanket coverage of a story. blogs are part of the diversity of the public media, and as such, the fact that they do cover such a diverse range of topics is to be applauded, not to be criticised. and i don’t think any criticism of irish blogs based on a mistaken view that the majority of american blogs are about american politics deserves to be taken seriously.