Blogging is, in general a good thing. It gives people a voice, it bypasses the mainstream media, and in many cases it gets news out in to the open which in other cases would not be heard, for example, after the attempts by Trafigura to muzzle the mainstream press with injunctions or the case of Oligarchs trying to stop criticism of them. But today, the shortcomings of the one man blog was highlighted for all to see, in my opinion, today.
One advantage that the main stream media has over bloggers is that there are sub-editors, lawyers, and people who stand aloof from a story, who can act as a critical friend or a knowledgeable expert, who can stop things being published.
The one man blogger does not do this. It relies on one person making all the decisions and one person making all the judgement calls. As Iain Dale says on his blog today, rather well in my opinion, what has been published elsewhere today does nobody who blogs about politics any great credit.
2 comments:
The amount of comments on Guido's blog and the attention it gets tells you something. And that's the fact that not many people share your view on this Nich.
The MSM is in cahoots with the politicians - they are all part of the same political 'class', and by and large scratch each others' backs for the large part.
Guido is a voice for those thoroughly pissed off with the political class and deferential media.
The number of gross homophobic and bigotted comments on his blog also tell us what sort of people read his work.
And let's stop calling him Guido, he's called Paul Staines.
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