The good, the bad and the bloggerly
Blogging, Media - - Posted on September, 20 at 10:27 am by Tim
Here’s two very interesting media stories that play to my prejudices that “ordinary viewers” are not the slack-jawed, disengaged yokels of legend. The first is by Maragaret Simons in Crikey and she points out that the further downmarket television current affairs programs have gone, the worse they have rated.
The second is by Tim Luckhurst pointing out that, despite falling sales more generally, the newspaper that are doing best are the quality ones. Actually, that’s oversimplyfying a bit: the point is probably more that people are willing to pay for quality. In fact, I’m going to leave you to look at that article and just concentrate on the first one.
Apart from Simons overarching point, she also has this nice quote from a new book by Graeme Turner:
Meanwhile the figures show that young people prefer to watch Andrew Denton or The Panel rather than tabloid current affairs.Turner comments:
In my view this happens because news matters, not because it doesn’t. These new formats are largely entertainment formats, it is true, but they are also marked by a highly sceptical, alienated attitude to established politics and its representation that is actually the reverse of disinterest…perhaps we have moved on to a world where news and current affairs can still pull big audiences, but they can’t do it any longer in the name of journalism.
It’s an interesting point and it came up recently in some research about The Daily Show in which the authors suggested that the show increased people’s cynicism about politics.
As a lot of people pointed out (see links in the article) this conclusion misses the point, the very point that Turner makes.
And obviously, such remarks have some relevance for the political blogosphere as well (I limit my comments to that subset). The knee-jerk angle that most discussions of blogs take is the comparison with journalism, an angle that is misleading, especially when what tends to happen is that it compares the best of journalism with the worst of blogging.
Political blogs will always be sycophantic on the mainstream media, and they will always need the well-resourced investigations of big news organisation, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have a role to play, won’t be able to attract an audience, and won’t be able to contribute analysis and discussion that is sometimes much better than what comes out of the contraints of the mainstream.
So sure, no triumphalism, but we — blog readers and bloggers alike — should push back against some of the unwarranted criticism that comes our way. A lot of it is simply ill-conceived.
September 20th, 2006 at 10:30 am
I think big media have already acknowledged the powerful role that blogs play in political and social discourse by heavily relying upon them as sources and incorporating poor versions of blogs into their online presence.
September 20th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Sort of. But most commentary in the msm about them is pretty negative, esp in Australia, but not just. I think Turner’s angle provides them with a much more interesting starting point.
September 20th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Of course the commentary is negative — they feel threatened. Their actions betray their bluster.
September 20th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Hopefully it’s a death spiral. As ratings go down, there’s a choice between broadening the appeal to more fickle and harder to please groups or keep playing and increasingly hardcore game to a diminishing base.
September 20th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Re blogs and mainstream news,
I broke a story about a local councilor who called for a major audit of an environmental group because he was concerned about terrorism. The councilor found out about the blog and went nuts.
The mainstream papers picked up the story about the blog, but did not touch the story about the councilor’s bizarre behaviour.
The journalist who wrote the story about the blog, was well aware the councilor had made the lunatic claims about the environmental group, but she failed to follow this story up.
This is the major problem with the mainstream media. They have lost their fourth estate mentality and too often fall back to the dull predictable, and most importantly, easy story.
September 20th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Too true…the blogs are giving them a run for their money…the criticism of blogs comes thick & fast…& reveals the panic that the majors are feeling. Viva la blog revolution!!!…:)
September 25th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
From the Simons piece
Have i misjudged this bold and truthful endeavour?
More seriously I think the line between cynical of established politics and simply cynical is a bit blurry…and I reckon Denton and the Panel fall on opposite sides. Actually the Panel might be a good case study in how youth attitudes have developed…especially if we include Frontline as a working dog precursor.