In a beautiful piece of flame-bait, the BBC\u2019s Andrew Marr has criticized bloggers the world over, stating that they are socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother’s basements.”\u00a0 He goes on to say that most bloggers are very angry people writing late at night whilst very drunk and that this will never replace journalism.<\/p>\n
Is he right?\u00a0 A little bit.\u00a0 Is he wrong?\u00a0 A little bit.\u00a0 Is his comment a bit stupid? \u00a0A little bit.\u00a0 Has he missed the point?\u00a0 Probably.<\/p>\n
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Lets have a look at his statement about most bloggers being very angry people.\u00a0 This is at least partially spot-on, as the reaction that a lot of bloggers had was outbursts of semi-literate anger spouted into Twitter or across the blogosphere.\u00a0 If someone accuses you of being angry, the best way to disprove this is probably not to scream \u201c@!#? you!\u00a0 I\u2019ll @!#?ing kill you!\u201d but there we go, so yes, a lot of bloggers are angry.\u00a0 That being said however, a lot of writers in general are angry.\u00a0 Writers have to get their passion and zeal from somewhere and sometimes that\u2019s anger, so maybe being angry isn\u2019t such a big problem.\u00a0 Incoherency is the bigger problem and often accompanies anger, but at the risk of becoming incoherent myself, we\u2019ll leave that for now.<\/p>\n
The idea that what Marr describes as \u201ccitizen journalism\u201d is of low quality is also for the most part true.\u00a0 The general public now has access to such a huge amount of eye wateringly advanced technology that allows them to broadcast their opinions and set forth their very soul to the world.\u00a0 The only problem is that a large portion of the general public has occasionally frightening opinions and their very soul is not always particularly interesting, which is to say nothing of most people\u2019s inability to articulate what they think.\u00a0 The signal to noise ratio of social networking sites, twitter or blogs in general is high, with the first two swamped with comments like \u201chaving an apple lol!\u201d or \u201comg off for drinkz!\u201d and the latter containing a couple of posts saying \u201cI don\u2019t know what to write this is my blog isn\u2019t it great amazing lol!\u201d before never again being updated.\u00a0 When you consider the sheer empowerment offered by wordbress, blogger or youtube, it is the equivalent of the sort of technology that up until a few years ago would only have been in the hands of professionals.\u00a0 However, all the technology in the world will not amount to high quality content.\u00a0 As a side note, any video game featuring user generated content will first be swamped with phallus-like objects, rip offs of other games and only a few sparkling gems of professional level quality and the same could possibly be extended to the wider internet community.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure that Marr is right to dismiss bloggers and by extension blogs themselves.\u00a0 As for replacing the traditional model of journalism, it could be argued that it\u2019s already happened and it\u2019s just that the results won\u2019t be seen for another generation or two.\u00a0 I only know one person in my circle of friends who gets a newspaper on a regular basis and the rest of my more-well-read-than-me friends all rely on a combination of blogs and blog-like news sites compiled into a single feed.\u00a0 On the rare occasion that I pick up a paper, I find myself reading stories that I read a couple of days before or items that feel like they\u2019re filling space.\u00a0 I don\u2019t see that traditional newspapers will see much of a fresh intake of new subscribers, as most of this generation will be consuming news from their smart phones or work computers as opposed to an awkward mass of paper that leaves ink on your fingers and isn\u2019t freely available.<\/p>\n
Blogging won\u2019t replace journalism, but that\u2019s mostly because a lot of it can\u2019t be described as anything other than journalism.\u00a0 A blog is not a type of writing; it is merely a publishing platform.\u00a0 A blogger is someone that posts to that platform, but a large number of bloggers can\u2019t be described as anything other than journalists.\u00a0 A fantastic example of this is Guido Fawkes at orderorder.com, a very influential blogger who has broken stories before major broadsheets and consistently churns out high quality, reliable and insightful investigative journalism.\u00a0 Journalists don\u2019t need to fear bloggers as they\u2019re pretty much the same thing, but publishers and broadcasters may have something to worry about in the future as blogs are proving in some cases to be lucrative business ventures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So Andrew Marr is right and he is wrong in his statement.\u00a0 The statement itself is also a bit weird.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure that he\u2019s actually talking about bloggers anyway.\u00a0 His use of the term \u201ccitizen journalist\u201d and referring to the anonymity of commenting makes me think of someone that frequently uses comment sites such as the BBC\u2019s \u201chave your say\u201d or someone that merely participates in the discussion of other websites or through forums. \u00a0I know Andrew Marr is a man of above average intelligence, so I\u2019m sure that he does know what a blog or blogger is and I\u2019m sure he wouldn\u2019t have made such a flippant comment without realizing he was probably alienating a few of his colleagues at the BBC itself, so maybe this is just a feeling I get.<\/p>\n
Finally, there\u2019s something incredibly inflammatory about the bile that he throws out about a stereotypical image of a blogger.\u00a0 It was funny when Malcolm Tucker said something almost identical in \u201cThe Thick of It\u201d, but that\u2019s Malcolm Tucker, a caricature of an angry, outdated and constitutionally dangerous political concept, not Andrew Marr, a political broadcaster with his own show on the BBC.\u00a0 What exactly is wrong with being bald or single anyway?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it only the \u201ccool kids\u201d at school that honestly had a problem with someone having pimples?\u00a0 As for the idea of bloggers living in their mother\u2019s basement, maybe I\u2019ve just had a very sheltered existence, but a young adult living in their mother\u2019s basement is a horribly American clich\u00e9 that doesn\u2019t really work over here.\u00a0 Whereas moving into a basement is quite a common thing to do after college in America, most graduates over here get to actually stay in their old bedroom until someone will employ them\u2026<\/p>\n
Maybe Andrew Marr is trying to provoke discussion, or maybe he said it as a bet.\u00a0 Perhaps he\u2019s over exposed, can\u2019t take the pressure and a personal prejudice slipped out because he was tired. \u00a0Maybe Andrew Marr is just a drunk and angry journalist. \u00a0Regardless, it doesn\u2019t really matter:\u00a0 As long as the internet remains a neutral publishing platform, blogs and bloggers aren\u2019t going anywhere.\u00a0 Even if they don\u2019t replace traditional journalism, they will certainly offer some strong competition for it and competition is never a bad thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a beautiful piece of flame-bait, the BBC\u2019s Andrew Marr has criticized bloggers the world over, stating that they are socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother’s basements.”\u00a0 He goes on to say that most bloggers are very angry people writing late at night whilst very drunk and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[47,48,49,39,239],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-andrew-marr","tag-blogging","tag-journalism","tag-politics","tag-writing"],"yoast_head":"\n