New post on the ABC’s Opinion Page is cross-posted over the fold. There’s some other great stuff there today, including a piece on a useful possible running-mate for Barry O’Bama
Andrew Landeryou responds this morning to a bizarre intervention by Neil Mitchell in the blog-gate affair, where he suggests that the Liberal bloggers should be prosecuted for “cyber-bullying”.
It leads Landeryou to offer a colourful call to arms, where he suggests that the activities of Australia’s blogosphere point towards a potential “golden age of political journalism”. He riffs a little on the decline of The Age, then says:
For all its downside, the new possibilities for communicating have the potential to usher in a golden age of political journalism, no longer monopolised by cultural elites but populated by a seething mix of leftards and patriots slugging it out, sometimes with harsh words, sometimes persuading, sometimes preaching to the choir but almost always adding to the sum total of human knowledge, debate and thought in a way that vastly exceeds what our grand-parents and their parents were able to enjoy. This is truly the golden age for political journalism and don’t let any Monthly reading, beret wearing lefty grouch in a Westgarth coffee shop tell you otherwise.
It might be an overly combative vision of the blogosphere’s potential, but broadly, I hope he’s right. It’s worth reading the piece in its entirety.
He’s also reminded me that I must pick up my beret from the dry-cleaner.
UPDATE: Lyn Calcutt over on Public Opinion takes up this theme, is much harder on CK than us, but makes some fair points along the way.
UPDATE 2: One of those points being, of course, that it was a blogger who broke the story in the first place.
UPDATE 3: Tree of Knowledge is onto this one, too.
I’ve always enjoyed Christian Kerr’s writing. I miss his contrarian presence at Crikey, but his move to the Australian can only improve the political coverage there.
Today, though, he’s revealed that he’s pretty well “on-message” when it comes to the Oz’s attitude to Ozblogistan. The evidence turns up in a piece this morning on the “blogs of war” crisis now enveloping the Victorian Liberals. As a whole, his article is pretty scathing about the Libs’ party organisation, not just in Victoria, but nationally.
At the end of the Howard era, he opines, the Libs’ are too reliant on immature “child soldiers” like the sacked staffers in Victoria - inexperienced, accustomed to cruisey Party or Parliamentary-staffer jobs, and without the experience that those “Labor union hacks” they revile have of interacting with ordinary people.
The killer comes, though, when he criticises their decision to go public with their criticisms on a blog:
They think that online smears are clever. Real political professionals know that the Australian blog world is insular, often ignorant and has virtually no influence on mainstream debate.
Ouch! Mind you, I’ve heard very similar opinions from other seasoned political pros. The funny thing is that the conferences I’ve attended lately - organised for academics and journos - have been consumed by the idea that bloggers present a direct threat to the ongoing viability of newspapers and other MSM outlets.
So where does the truth lie? Any thoughts?
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