gatewatching

Goodness me. There’s a bit of a stoush on the Oz’s website! Janet Albrechtsen wrote a column earlier this week that gave out some advice to Kevin Rudd, and claimed victory in the “Culture Wars”, or argued that they were still going on, or something like that (It’s honestly a little bit hard to tell). Paul Keating has replied today, fairly intemperately, to a side-swipe he recieved in Albrechtsen’s column, and it’s a bit of a companion-piece to his posthumous pot-shot at Paddy McGuinness in the Fin a couple of weeks back (which is still behind the pay-wall, so no link). If it’s less discomfiting for the reader than the McGuinness diatribe, it’s probably because Janet is still very much alive, and able to defend herself.

Anyway, we’ve been in enough trouble for our alleged partisanship lately, so I’ll leave the rights and wrongs well alone, although I will say it’s all pretty entertaining whichever way you slice it. Also, perhaps I’ll risk remarking that there is something to be said for this comment on Albrechtsen’s summoning of the dreaded elites:

Albrechtsen, for her own part, of course, was not part of any elite. The ear of a prime minister and a cabinet for a decade, which finally enjoyed control of both houses of parliament; membership of a clique of journalists, sharing common cause, with unfettered access to the opinion pages of the broadsheet newspapers of the country - nothing elitist about that.

The main reason I’m posting though is to ask a couple of questions. Bear in mind that it’s up there on the Oz website, and that people are commenting furiously, whether they’re supporting PK or JA. The question is: has a current or former Prime Minister ever had an opinion piece published in this manner before, in a “blog-like” format, with the facility for immediate and copious feedback from members of the public? (Be good if people could think of prior examples)

Secondly, does anyone think Keating should start his own snark blog? What could the title be? My nomination is “unrepresentative swill”.

UPDATE: Niall’s take bringeth some more funny.

UPDATE #2: Others take sides in the match of the day. Hangover is barracking for PJK, as (perhaps predictably) are some commenters over on this LP Thread. And justice for all takes a more even-handed approach. I only found one so far that is sticking up for JA, but I’m not going to link to it because the blog as a whole seems excessively concerned with the fate of “the white race” - yowsers!

UPDATE #3 Janet comes back. Honestly it’s just like Gladiators.

UPDATE #4 Like Ken in the comments below, Jason Soon over at Catallaxy is not exactly supportive of Janet, but thinks Keating’s ego is the main player in this stoush.

blogging, government, media blogging, celebrity, government, journalism, media

Our 8th Club Bloggery is up at the ABC site. We’ve got some recommendations for voters based on the parties online performance. Have a look.

This will be our last Club Bloggery for the election, but keep an eye out for more pieces from the gatewatching crew.

Club Bloggery part 8: Scoring the e-lection

Jason Wilson, Barry Saunders, Axel Bruns.

This close to the election, it’s customary for newspapers to recommend a vote one way or the other. We’re not about to do that at Club Bloggery (although we would recommend thinking about the candidate who’s been more responsive and available to your community), but we can do a summary of who has made the best running on the Internet, and understood and used its possibilities best.
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blogging, government blogging, government, journalism

Hi all - here’s the latest Club Bloggery posted over at the ABC on Friday. The topic seems to have excited a fair amount of interest - feel free to comment here.

Jason Wilson, Axel Bruns, and Barry Saunders

Collectively, the writers here at Club Bloggery have been watching the Australian political blogosphere for years. We know that the bloggers who have perhaps been most important and prominent down under are psephologists – specialist electoral statisticians who try to understand and analyse polls, and consider the interlocking numbers games of electoral politics.

Head counters like the anonymous Possum Comitatus, Simon Jackman, William Bowe, and Peter Brent produce accessible, incisive, original takes on polling, and engage in prolonged discussion with their readers about the meaning and import of their analysis. Week after week, free of charge, they offer in-depth analysis on polling that improves our understanding of the political process and of how party strategists think. That’s why we were surprised this week when a journalist in The Australian, Samantha Maiden, attacked a few psephs by name, implying that their sites amounted to little more than left-wing wish-fulfilment.

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blogging, citizen journalism, government, media blogging, citizen journalism, government, journalism, media

The latest Club Bloggery is up on the ABC. Here’s is the longer version.

By Jason Wilson, Barry Saunders, and Axel Bruns

Climate change dominated a couple of days of Federal Election campaigning earlier this week, with the major parties both fumbling in laying out their responses. Peter Garrett and Malcolm Turnbull were punished by the mainstream media for, respectively, revealing something approximating a real opinion about how climate change agreements should work, and for being involved in a debate about Government policy before it’s implemented.

Australia’s bloggers have been more nuanced in their coverage of environmental challenges over a much longer period, and unlike the mainstream media, they have been able to carry out analyses and host conversations that reveal the range of community opinions on what kind of shape our environment is in, and what we can or ought to do to remedy it.
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blogging, citizen journalism, government blogging, citizen journalism, climate change, environment, government, journalism

The next Club Bloggery for ABC Online is up. Here’s another version of the piece. This one is coming to grips with how issues early in the election campaign have played out in the blogosphere.

Beyond Gotcha: Blogs as a space for debate.

Jason Wilson, Axel Bruns, Barry Saunders.

The mainstream media and critics of Web 2.0’s “cult of the amateur” often suggest that blogs and citizen journalism will never replace their mainstream counterparts because they “don’t break stories”. Notwithstanding the fundamental furphy – who ever said anything about “replacing” the MSM anyway? – there is some truth in this. It goes without saying that most bloggers don’t have the resources, pulling power or proximity to the pollies to do much original political reporting: this is something that most sensible public affairs bloggers concede. (Though how often the mainstream media really break stories – as against exploiting deliberate, calculated ‘leaks’ from party spinsters – is a separate question.)

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blogging, citizen journalism, government blogging, citizen journalism, government, journalism

The announcement of the Greensblog is an interesting example for the possibilities of blogging for minority political parties. Clearly drawing inspiration from Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett’s blog , it shows the value of the blogging format for discussing political positions that fall outside the easy left-right, Labor-Liberal soundbite-based journalism often found in the industrial mainstream. As Greensblog contributor Tim Hollo hopes, it will work for the Greens because their policies aren’t necessarily “soundbite-friendly”, and they welcome the possibility of consultative policy development.

This form of engagement is something the major parties should be watching. For some years now, observers have noted a trend of voters moving away from traditional party affiliations to multi-faceted political perspectives, shifting from party-political to social activism, and forming fluid allegiances that vary across policy areas.

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blogging, government, social networking academic, blogging, e-democracy, government, social networking, wiki