From the Andersonstown News article - "As it stands, anybody at all can call themselves a journalist."

Ah.. No.. it's too easy.. the jokes just write themselves.

Ball please Pete!

I think you should yellow card him Mick, just for the craic ;)

[innocent voice]

Me!?!

[/innocent voice]

Unbelievably small minded and a little bit bitter sounding from that quote.

And yes, I am the one that said Slugger wasn't a weblog - aren't you glad now though?

Aha! We were right (again)! Slugger ain't a blog!

So who aggregates the aggregator?

Yeah, definately not a blog. No navel gazing or self-aggrandizing. Plus no-one got sacked on here.

Is Danny Morrison's site a blog-site ?

Small-minded and bitter?.. hmmm.. you forgot arrogant and self-aggrandizing, guys.

Dude. Weblog. If you must 'blog, or blog (gah). But blog-site is an abberation. And while I'm here quit verbing the noun, you don't blog something, you post to a blog.

Blogs are so 2002 anyhow. I mean, once the great unwashed can do it, the Cool Kids need to go elsewhere.

Does anybody else keep carrier pigeons ? ;)

Bye then, Toaster! ;)

Pete, haven't I already left?

Have you, Marc?

Have you, Marc?

I thought the quote was pretty funny and accurate

Good for you spirit-level, that's using the old noggin.

Did I mention I thought the earth was flat?

Can you prove the earth isn't flat?

Define 'prove'.

State it so I can't disprove it?

/me filibusters some more. Finished with the self-aggrandizing, back to my old fave.

PK2P

'As it stands, anybody at all can call themselves a journalist.'

Point of fact, and subject to much debate, anyone can call themselves an accountant.

Chartered, Certified, Public and about 50 other variations are, however, protected. Now - back to your regular viewing.

But, my point is shouldn't REAL journalists check their facts?

Quit yer jiving, fule, I have a community centre to open.

How does that prove a sphreical (ha!) earth? I refer you to Gene Ray for the closest I will allow non-flatness.

Tread water all you want Toaster, you said "State it so I can't disprove it" - I have, you haven't disproved it. And you're getting no clues.

Anyone can call themselves whatever they like - the trick of it is, getting others to agree with their description.

Correct, Doctor Jacko! ;-)

It worked for Leonardo!

".... a blogger and what they do is make totally unsubstantiated and deeply libellous claims about people they don't like and invite their friends to write in doing the same."

With so much crass politics about, no need to get personal at all.

Do some people want and need to be insulted?

Would political necrophilia still be a turn on without the outraged audience?

I guess the problem for real journalists is that nobody believes them anymore.

Years of tabloids, sensationalism and lies has reallly had an impact.

Regulating them like lawyers should really restore public confidence....

Malachy,
I was in court three times this week, I was represented by three different barristers, All three were regulated and I had no confidence in any of them.

So the question is who will do the regulating and do I have confidence in the regulator.

I also think your forgetting about free speech, not to mention the fact that the Any Trash News would be very short staffed.

The Devil: It has always appeared to me that your legal representation is second to none. Still, i guess you know your onions when in comes to such matters.

PS: back to the thread,

If anyone does not think that Squawker.. Squalid.. err.. em.. Squinter was not thinking of Slugger when he scrawled his copy then I can only assume that the same people also believe that the Provos did not rob the Northern Bank

If Squinter is bothered about the allegations, he should sue. Otherwise his story remains full of unsubstantiated claims too. The irony appears to have been missed...

I think I know who he's referring to, and if I'm right, the guy is not a blogger. In fact, if it is who I think it is, it's blatantly obvious that it's not a blog.

Making claims about defamation, then coyly (possibly inadvertantly) muddying the waters and not identifying the writer except in a 'nudge, nudge, wink, wink' kind of way is hardly a stunning example of great journalism.

Beowulf,
It is second to none... unfortunately none was second to everyone else... :-)

Sorry about that Mr. Devil - the comment about lawyers was intended as sarcasm :-)

My opinion is that regulating journalists won't change anything. I think the real journalists should try blogging.

The news "industry" is being and will in the future be impacted greatly by increased internet use and for similar reasons (worthlessness of the mainstream "industry" and freedom of choice for their "consumers").

Gonzo,
It was the usual Any Trash News scatter gun approach, aim at a crowd and fire.. you're bound to hit something,...what.. what did you say.. innocent bystanders.. Hell if they ain't behind the scatter gun they ain't innocent.

Malachy,
I know, it's just that i'm like the provos in some ways.. I can't resist having a go at the Any Trash News, and they can't resist robbing banks

Let a thousand flowers bloom say I. One could just as well ask is the Angrytown News journalism, and with considerably more reason. I see no reason to acknowledge a media hierarchy based on whether or not one has access to printing equipment, regardless of the quality of the content.

Let a thousand flowers bloom say I. One could just as well ask is the Angrytown News journalism, and with considerably more reason. I see no reason to acknowledge a media hierarchy based on whether or not one has access to printing equipment, regardless of the quality of the content.

Is this piece not directed at the blanket and Mr Mc Intyre.

We're classing the Blanket as a weblog now? Aieee...

I thought that was the fatal mistake of our Andytown columnist; the Blanket is patently not a blog. It is clearly an online magazine.

(Assuming it was a reference to the Blanket, which the columnist fails to clarify. Perhaps this was because each time Squinter demonises someone, they end up a media darling.)

It seems an even more bizarre statement to make when Squinter then provides a definition of 'blog'. Eh?! Maybe I'm missing something, but it all seems terribly petty and badly researched.

Slugger, of course, can be criticised by its readers in the comments column. Others are more restrictive about the right to reply to criticism.

I was going to comment, but deleted it, that squinter should try keeping a weblog, just to see how his/her journalism stands up to such proximity to the reader. So a nod to Sir Gonzo for that last comment.

*BURP* oops, excuse me.


Note to self: don't forget to ask Mick if typekey supports drug testing especially considering the high number of people here who appear to be ate'n the funny fags.

Squinter should have named the person and site involved that way we could have judged what exactly he/she was getting at.
If it was Mc Intyre I seem to remember him stating that he does carry a NUJ card and thus can be described as a journo.

The reality of the situation is the fact that the mainstream media is heavily biased against SF, no point in complaining about it, it is simply a fact of life. In that regard these people are going to employ 'journalists' who denigrate Gerry Adams loudly and often enough.

If the 'jurnalists' employed to wield the dagger are happy enough in that role then fair play to them. Afterall as one once said of others,'you've got to turn a pound.'

For once I agree with Pat. No point in insulting someone if no one knows who you are insulting. Poor show on Livingstone's part.

Of course, doing it this way likely saves his bosses money and court costs.

It's pouring here and I had a dreadful time getting the hens in to roost.

For my money, if Squinter was indeed referring to McIntyre, and I'm not so sure he was, McIntyre fits the bill of journo (i.e. fearlessly speaking truth onto power and giving a voice to the voiceless) an awful lot better than an awful lot of others - Squinter and his team of pet and petty propogandists certainly being amongst them.

I just have a notion that Squinter was indeed either applying the scatter gun approach or referring specifically to ATW.

On the other hand he might have been short of copy and it was a filler.

Sorry, I sat on my hands as long as I could.

"The reality of the situation is..." - Pat McLarnon

Tell me I'm not alone, please someone.

I think Jacko got it right when he said "Anyone can call themselves whatever they like - the trick of it is, getting others to agree with their description."

There are many types of journalist, and the range varies as much as the quality. I don't carry an NUJ card, but that doesn't mean I'm not a journalist. Not even my qualification makes me a journalist.

Just the writing.

Squinter and McIntyre are clearly BOTH journalists, no matter what your opinion of their writing is.

Jacko may also have been correct in another respect - it could have been a reference to our erstwhile chums on A Tangled Web. Must ask DV if he was on the box last week. McIntyre was, so I thought it possibly a reference to him.

Beowulf

As Bowie screamed On that wonderful number 'Rock and Roll Suicide' - "YOU'RE NOT ALONE

Well you're not alone in reading it, Beowulf.. whether you're the only one taking it seriously may, however, be a different matter..

Gonzo

Next week, I think.

Next week, I think.

Open goal ;)

I read the 'cheat sheet'and when I saw the words'the little man',I thought of Seadog.
Anna

Can you really define people by their enemies?

If so, I'd like to meet this blogger for, as I recall, the Andytown paper got Newton Emerson fired once upon a time. They also did a wee bit of dirty work over here, savaging John Fay in the process. But I wouldn't hold a grudge. Hell no. Honest. Trust me.

Yeah, I'd really like to meet the blogger.

And if it's ATW? Well, that's the price you pay for a God with a sense of humor.

Afterall as one once said of others,'you've got to turn a pound.'

Posted by: Pat Mc Larnon [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 11, 2005 06:41 PM

Yeah well if the Shinners hadn't give the go-ahead for their mates to turn 26.5 million of them, then we wouldn't be discussing it now

Does writing for 'The Blanket' make you a journo now?

/me wonders if he can make cash out of this...

I doubt it - the Blanket doesn't pay.

Slugger's even worse - Mick wants you to donate!

*just kidding Mick!*

Websites and blogs are time-consuming to maintain and involve a certain amount of expense. Consider them a labour of love, Straytoaster, although I think you knew that already!

'Yeah well if the Shinners hadn't give the go-ahead for their mates to turn 26.5 million of them, then we wouldn't be discussing it now'

Sure it's only waste paper and that must be true because Orde said so.

I'm seriously considering making some sort of online buzzword bingo game for this site.

Well given there is no real journalism these days, are journalists bloggers?

Gonzo: (we)blogs are only time consuming if you spend time thinking about what you put there. Anyone who has read mine realises I don't do such a thing.

Surly the joy of the internet is if we wish we can put such hierarchies of who is a journalist or not aside and leave that to petty office politics and bitching editors. As to NUJ membership being a criteria, well that would leave out probably a majority of the main Irish and English Dailies. I doubt Kilroy Silk or even Mr Myers are TU members or any other Management poodles. Come to that, is the ATN group a TU organised company, I would like to think so?

Forget all this top down nonsense, which I realise is difficult for some party members to do, but the net allows people the freedom to write, people may read their work and if they like it do so again in the future. After all there is plenty to choose from out there, which cannot be said about the capitalist media, which on some issues is much of a muchness these days.

Bloggers have the advantage over Journalists in some respects:
They can explore and speculate about motive, the key to the surface apparition the journos must record
They don't have to feign respect to get interviews
They can tell the audience unpalatable truths without paying for lost circulation
They don't have to follow a communal sectarian or political editorial line
No good stuff gets spiked

Shades of McLuhan's "The medium is the message". How people use the medium is up to them. Some bloggers are doing net journalism. Daily Summit was a particularly good example of this. It has lots of potential, but it needs financial backers in order to produce fresh material.

On the whole the engaged blogosphere (read Stray Toaster and Leptard for the eloquently disengaged) is less about journalism and more about disaggregation and commentary. However frustrated these guys get at times, it is the journalist that feeds them in the first place. But it's also easy to forget how powerful this disaggregation actually is.

On a recent trip to Queens, I did my usual feeding frenzy at the paper shop, buying up all the local Sundays and Dailies. What shocked me is how the stories read once put back into the editorial frames. Compared with Slugger's output, it's pretty much replicating a single world view for their readership.

Here, people are likely to read a piece from Gregory Campbell then a snippet from Father Des and maybe something from the FT, all in quick succession.

Now that's not a function of journalism. But it is an editorial choice that's not open to the conventional media (unless they pay someone like me to run a blog for their online audiences).

Bloggers work in a free market. The readership decides the significance of the material. But it's folly to think that if the quality is not there in the first place that you can attract large readerships.

With all due respect to Squinter, it goes without saying that not all bloggers are journalists: which (I think) is one of the points that Stray Toaster's been making in his own idiosyncratic way! Indeed some of the sharpest bloggers, don't transfer well into traditional media.

But there's something in this disaggregation thing that is affecting the way journalists approach both their subject and their readerships. I'd expect these effects to get bigger as the Internet migrates further into the mainstream.

aquifer

Yes, you are quite right. There is also the luxury of anonymity and far less chance of having the arse sued off you.

eloquently disengaged Cheers Mick, I like that. :)

This thread is presented under the title "Is Blogging Journalism?" The answer, no doubt much to the dismay of many, is a resounding NO.

I think blogging is fun and may even play some, as yet undefined, positive role but, unlike on-line magazines, it is certainly not journalism.
Blogging is recationary. It doesn't investigate or seek out news or items of interest of its own accord. It doesn't bring to the public's notice issues that are not already in the public domain it reacts to the issues journalists report on. It is unregulated gossip, innuendo, invective, personal opinion and verbal fist fighting. A blog site bears more resemble to a soap box than anything related to serious journalism.
Now much journalism can carry with it similar characteristics but it is never just those. And, incidentally, most journalists can write and usually do so under their own name - unlike me and most of the rest of us.

Jacko:

I think the blogging to which is refered to here is more in the tradition of Olde Stylee pamphleteering, where small like-minded nutters try to spread their philosophy to the masses. (I would say this was 18th century, but I have no idea if it was then or before, or after. Or at all. Though I am sure it did exist. I think.)

One of the original things I was using my blog for was to *learn* how to write.

A weblog can be journalistic. Generally they aren't, and the only journalism they get is what they leech from the mainstream media. That isn't to say that there aren't the other type out there.

As Mick and I have discussed before, it is more what you do with the medium than the medium itself.

As for psuedonyms, I guess I am guilty of that too, but have used this name forever. Still, it is a time honoured way of hiding, eh, P. O'Neill?

That's a bit hard on the pamphleteering ST. That was communication with the masses, and like any communication it can be abused.

Davros: But isn't that what the bloggers want? Communication with the masses? To get their point (left/right/religious/hateful/obscure) across to an audience?

And, like blogging, it wasn't communication with the masses, it was communication with the elite, the intelligensia. (Then: those who could read. Now: those who are connected.)

But yes, all communication can be abused. Granted. And all statements are ambiguous. And all generalisations are false. Including that one.

Jacko

I respectfully disagree when you say:

Blogging is recationary. It doesn't investigate or seek out news or items of interest of its own accord. It doesn't bring to the public's notice issues that are not already in the public domain it reacts to the issues journalists report on.

I don't believe this is true. There is a certain amount of agenda setting by Slugger, and while there's loads of reactionary stuff, I do think there's been occasions when Slugger can come into its own.

The recent debates on the Red Hand of Ulster/Blue Peter's Zoe Salmon and also Mary McAleese's remarks about people teaching their kids hatred were reactionary, yes, but seemed to have been noticed more widely. I saw the Red Hand debate at Slugger mentioned in the Belfast Tele's splash on the story (slow news day maybe!), and the McAleese debate was mentioned by Ruth Dudley Edwards in the Indo. Mick was quoted in Chris Thornton's Tele analysis the other day. When I compared a couple of articles over a week ago, the two writers were interviewed a couple of days later together on the BBC. We carried almost live 'coverage' of elections that was followed closely. Slugger does seem to drive debate beyond the web.

But this isn't about totting up mentions of Slugger in the media. There certainly have been occasions where Slugger has broken news before the mainstream media, and we've carried some statements from press conferences by politicians faster than any outlet.

But the thing about Slugger is the debate it creates. As a journalist, I enjoy the instant feedback, criticism, arguments that follow. A conversation happens here that doesn't happen anywhere else, between people who might never otherwise engage.

It is unregulated gossip, innuendo, invective, personal opinion and verbal fist fighting. A blog site bears more resemble to a soap box than anything related to serious journalism.

Sometimes it's all those things too! But isn't that why you're here?

Again, with respect ST, you underestimate the people of the 18th century if you think only the elite had access to the pamphlets. The various agrarian campigns were fuelled in part by leaflets.

Davros: I defer to your knowledge on that, I was just trying an analogy I thought fitted.

Though on the subject of such a thing, I thought on the whole the proles in the 18th century were illiterate? Ah, thought wasn't the pamphlet also the start of the political cartoon for that reason? Sorry, history isn't my thing, which is suprising considering where I am from. ;)

Though there is the other aspect of blogging I don't think has been mentioned (I am too lazy to reread back to see if it was mentioned) in that it is (for most self-aggrandizing navel-gazing output) very voyeuristic. Some blogs are like peepholing on a very sexy, very banal traincrash.

Belfast Gonzo

"But isn't that why you're here?"

Of course.
I am not attacking blogging. I have no difficulty with it or I wouldn't be here. But to call it journalism is, I feel, to get a little above ourselves.
And I really enjoy it too. But I don't come to Slugger or any other blog site to find out the news. I land here to react, comment or just to wind people up. And, moreover, mostly in a fashion that wouldn't lend itself - to put it mildly - to other platforms available to me.

"The recent debates on the Red Hand of Ulster/Blue Peter's Zoe Salmon and also Mary McAleese's remarks about people teaching their kids hatred were reactionary, yes, but seemed to have been noticed more widely."

I think, Slugger or no Slugger, the examples you mention above would have been pretty widely covered anyway.

I think blogging is the modern equivalent of gossiping over the garden fence - on the very odd ocassion you might learn something, but mostly it is about letting off steam, exaggerating things and making claims that wouldn't quite stand up in court. And all, as I've mentioned before, with the added luxury of anonymity.

Blogging may in fact be filling a very human need, and actually be a reaction to the lack of neigbourhood chit-chat (most of us hardly know our neighbours now, much less feel free to chat with or confide in them) the dying art of conversation and the absolute death of letter writing. It may be filling a deeper need for communication and contact beyond the cursory, obligatory and habitual. Could it be related to the collapse of community and society(?)?
But it is not journalism.

StrayToaster

"I think the blogging to which is refered to here is more in the tradition of Olde Stylee pamphleteering, where small like-minded nutters try to spread their philosophy to the masses."

I don't agree.
When I stumble on something akin to Thomas Paine's Common Sense or his Rights of Man (to mention just two examples) on a blog site I'll rapidly change my mind, but until then...

The growth of pamphleteering actually coincided with a growing literacy and, besides, anything worth the trouble was read out at public meetings etc. so the masses were generally well aware of the latest ideas doing the rounds.

ST - Religion had a huge part to play in literacy and one of the battlegrounds in Ireland was biblical. The common man was encouraged to read although it was a bone of contention between, and to some extent within, Protestant and Catholic Church. Books of Common prayer and Bibles in Irish and English were produced and distributed - and there was resentment among the elite, scribes and some members of the church, at the spread of dangerous knowledge out of their control.

A conversation happens here that doesn't happen anywhere else, between people who might never otherwise engage.
posted by Belfast Gonzo

Bingo, for me Gonzo hits the nail on the head as to the real value of slugger. In a society like NI, for Slugger, as it does to be able to carry out this function is priceless. Im nor really sure if Slugger can be described as a blog in the traditional sense. In many ways it is more like a letters page in a newspaper that is forever being up dated and is also inter active, or maybe even talk radio. Surly Slugger has more in common with the indynews sites than most blogs. I doubt there are many Jornos who cover Ireland who do not drop in most days.

I can understand why many professional journalist are getting snooty about Blogs, after all until its invent, they had the market almost all to themselves. What the web has taught millions of people is you not have to have a silk pen to get you point across, with a spell check to aid you and an idea in your head there are people out there who are interested in what you have to say, if only to challenge you. Great wordsmiths will always be needed, loved and admired, but the rest of us now have our input. It is part of the process of encouraging active citizenship, more power to it.

mickhall

I agree entirely.

My point is, blogging is something separate and should celebrate that, not try and pretend to be something it isn't.

As a journo myself, I note the near contempt some posters seem to hold us in.
I will confine my defence of the profession merely to asking people to reflect for a minute or two on every major public scandal over the past decades in Ireland and Britain.
Then to consider whether most came to light through police investigation,institutional self-regulation or through good investigative journalism.
Journalism more than any political opposition holds institutional power, and the abuse of it, to account.

ST's thesis should not be discounted.

Here's someone else who's made the comparison. The phenomenon in England really got going under the protestant revolution, particular during the period of Cromwell's rise between 1640 and 1660.

Interestingly this review of Joad Raymond's Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain. a slightly wider period describes the pamphlet as being "a short, cheap, vernacular work 'generally printed in quarto format,... of topical interest or engaged with social, political or ecclesiastical issues" (p. 8). Crucially, pamphlets were associated in the public mind with slander or scurrility. He then suggests that pamphlets were part of the everyday practice of politics, and the primary means of creating and influencing public opinion during the hundred years under consideration in this book, from 1588 to 1688'".

Personally, I think Jacko's setting the bar too high when looking at exemplars of the form such as Paine's work or even Swift's A Modest Proposal. These come a very long way into the history of the form.

Blogging has a long way to go before it can lay such potent claims to posterity's undivided attention!

Jacko

I am not attacking blogging. I have no difficulty with it or I wouldn't be here. But to call it journalism is, I feel, to get a little above ourselves...

I think blogging is the modern equivalent of gossiping over the garden fence

I think you are mistaking 'blogging' with 'commenting on a blog'. You are merely a commentator. I am a blogger!

Many blogs simply don't permit feedback - the blog is the 'web log' part. Comments are not an integral part of a blog, though they are on a message board.

As for gossip and quality, you've obviously never read a tabloid paper!

;o)

Re: above post.

The par below the one in italics should also have been italicised.

Mick
"Personally, I think Jacko's setting the bar too high when looking at exemplars of the form such as Paine's work or even Swift's A Modest Proposal."

Yes, of course I am.

Belfast Gonzo

"As for gossip and quality, you've obviously never read a tabloid paper!"

Now, now, no need to get tetchy.

But people generally known as journalists go out and dig up the gossip for a tabloid - bloggers feed off the work of journalists.

bloggers feed off the work of journalists

The Baghdad blogger didn't Jacko.

Personally speaking, I think Davros is setting the bar too high when citing the Baghdad blogger as an example of the form.