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Presentation to the Association for Journalism Education delivered 18 June, 2009 at City University
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Association for Journalism Education
18 June 2009
City University
Tell you about the blog
Give you my take on political reporting
Thoughts on the business economics of blogging and news
making My take on the digital future
Criticisms of blogging
Guido's Mission : Narcissism and personal
amusement Mischief making
Despair with the political class Despair with the Lobby system
Despair with Private Eye, “Fiskers” Unwanted on Samizdata
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May 2009
Guido’s blog is political scandal central No pretence to objectivity
Guido is aimed at journalists, Westminster insiders, wonks,
politicians, the Lobby, activists, spin doctors and broadcast media
During Tory and LibDem leadership battles crucial point of information for
activists Killed Hain’s deputy leadership
campaign
Insider / Outsider? Guido has some credibility
More Drudge than Wonkette Will be like Rush to Bush under Tories
Journalists in the beginning gave Guido tips
No longer. Guido sells to papers front pages
Blogging journalists new competition Diarists were Guido's main competition
Press Plagiarist of the Year Award
Why Smeargate went to the papers
and not on Guido’s blog first.
Why Smeargate went to the papers: Wife is a feisty cautious lawyer
Downing Street spinning “security threat”
Legal issues over copyright and the manner in which the emails were
obtained Whistleblower laws exclude “for profit”
Maximise the impact
The Lobby is an obedience school:
Come to heel and you get titbits.
How many political journalists can really hold their head up high?
Cowardice and cronyism run right through the Lobby, fearful of being taken off the teat of
pre-packaged stories served to them. That is not journalism; that is copytaking.
Thoughts on the business
of news and blogging.
No real general money making model in UK for bloggers currently
Popbitch and Guido are viable businesses
Blogging plus traditional media pays enough
Iain Dale does punditry / Guido sells stories
Tech blogs make good money Some “specialist” blogs make money
MessageSpace blog advertising network data• The single highest paid blogger had sales
on average of £3,872 per month
• The top 10% of bloggers had monthly sales averaging £2,861 in (Q4 ‘08) a rise of 64%
from £1,741 last year (Q4 ’07).
• The middle 40% of bloggers had average monthly sales of £351.
• The remaining 50% had average monthly sales of £54.
"How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths", by Glenn Reynolds. This is the 21st century, the days of media conglomerates making the news in a top-down Fordist fashion are over. Boutique news sources will proliferate.
The "news" is no longer what Paxman says it is, the news is whatever is disseminated to a wide audience, Big Media is going to be disintermediated when it falls down because technology has drastically reduced the cost of dissemination. Failing to hold our political class to account is the failing of Big Media in Britain.
First they sneered
Then they feared
Don't worry, be happy, there will still be news journalism without newspapers
Video blogging is the future Podcasting is so yesterday
The Press will be pixellated not print Newsrooms will survive, newspapers
won’t, they will be news brands More people read Guido than read
Private Eye, Hislop is wrong
Answering critics of blogging
You get things wrong Unfiltered
Noise to signal / ratio
The comments are profane etc.
You are beyond the reach of libel laws
Platform for wannabee journalists
That is a feature not a bug Comment costs nothing and a lot of
paid for comment is rubbish filler News costs a lot to do professionally, maybe NGOs and campaigns can do it
on the cheap
Unaccountable and unedited:
Accountable to readers Sub-editing is crowd-sourced
Final thoughts: US has more paid bloggers than
lawyers Read what was written about the Fourth
Estate and the coffee house pamphleteers of yore, the same is now
said of bloggers. Newspaper journalism isn’t something
sacred, it is a business.
A business that is failing.