gatewatching

Amongst the standard-issue ammunition in the journalism industry’s defensive skirmishes against those pesky citizen journalists and news bloggers is the deceptively simple claim that there’s a clear difference between reporting the news, i.e. breaking stories (which is what professional journalists do) and commenting on the news, i.e. “endless talk” (which is what everyone else does).

It’s a line repeated in the latest missive from Christian Kerr in The Australian - a rabid, self-serving rant against all those online commentators from Possum’s Pollytics to Larvatus Prodeo whom he doesn’t like, curiously claiming in its title that “our blogs [are] too analytical”, as if intelligent analysis is somehow a bad thing. Still, if nothing else, it’s got one thing going for it: if ‘real’ journalists are the ones that break stories, then Kerr himself isn’t a journalist.

One problem with that neat definition, though, is that breaking stories isn’t a particularly common trait of mainstream newsroom practice these days: much of the content of our daily newspapers and broadcast bulletins comes from a diminishing number of global wire services, and is simply processed by journalists to fit the local context. Similar to citizen journalists’ common practice of gatewatching - following the news passing through the gates of mainstream news publications, and then commenting on it - this is a kind of industrial gatewatching, where agency feeds are constantly monitored for new items to be inserted into the locally-produced publication. So, news bloggers and citizen journalists don’t tend to break stories - but neither, for the most part, do professional journalists.

Read more…

blogging analysis, Christian Kerr, citizen journalism, commentary, Die Zeit, journalism, news blogging, paid content, The Australian

Newspoll Tuesday has become a bit of an occasion in the Australian blogosphere. The influence of the pseph bloggers, the moments of antagonism between the blogosphere and the Oz last year, the motivation to enter into further fruitful dialogue with Dennis Shanahan, and the urge to take Dr Nelson’s temperature have meant that most of the major blogs will offer some opinion on the latest numbers.

Today’s no exception. The headline news, which even Mr Shanahan has forced himself to read out, is that Nelson’s surge is over for the moment, and that Labor has boosted its support at the Coalition’s expense. Nice takes include Tree of Knowledge’s snarky rhetorical questions and disturbing photoshopping, Kim at LP’s questions about the media’s real influence on public opinion, Andrew Bolt’s call for Dr Nelson’s head, and Tim Dunlop’s scepticism about the whole concept of a “Honeymoon”. Pride of place, as always, goes to the psephos takes - Pollbludger’s discussion thread, Mumble’s spin smackdowns, and Possum’s detailed analysis (including wonky graphics and a Pollytracker update).

Yes, Newspoll Tuesday gives a warm fuzzy feeling of regularity for the blogosphere connoisseur. But it may be more important than that. Even though it’s based on an MSM poll, it might show that the Australian blogosphere is developing it’s own news cycles and temporality. The peculiar trajectory of the development of political blogging here (as well as the features of Australian democracy) mean that, at least once a fortnight, everyone is talking about the same thing.

Uncategorized blogosphere, Bolt, Dennis Shanahan, Larvatus Prodeo, Mumble, Newspoll, Poll Bludger, Possum Comitatus, psephology, The Australian, Tree of Knowledge

Yesterday, Possum did a piece for Crikey (reproduced on his blog) which was a great take-down of some MSM reporting of some pretty inconsequential movements in the Newspoll numbers. Poss reckons the Oz (especially the Shanahany bits) is back to their old tricks - spinning, shifting the goalposts, and generally trying to make things look worse than they are for the PM.

If you’d rather rely on qualitative polling than the hunches of Dennis to get an insight into what people thought about the budget a little while back, check out Graham Young’s write-up of his What the People Want polling series in On Line Opinion this morning.

The summary? “Overall the budget didn’t evoke strong emotions and was incremental rather than revolutionary.” Kevin Rudd consolidated things, and although Graham’s survey didn’t include the fuelwatch fracas, it’s likely that the long-term effect of the last week or two will be closer to the findings of his polling than the guesses/spin on the meaning of quantitaive polling by gallery journos.

Graham Young budget, Dennis Shanahan, Graham Young, poll wars, polling, Possum Comitatus, The Australian, What the People Want

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?

blogging Blog-gate, blogging, Christian Kerr, The Australian

One of the most consistently… bracing political blogs is Andrew Elder’s clearing-house for the foibles of the commentariat, Politically Homeless.

I haven’t had time to have a good solid read of his stuff for a while - a comment from The Doctor on a previous Gatewatching post led me to have a squiz this evening.

His stuff is critical and often hilarious, but it’s beyond snark - Elder’s style involves a close, often line-by-line disassembly of the offerings of the paid-up commentariat, and discussions of their shortcomings that are extended, impassioned and incisive. Usually each post focusses on a single article.

I couldn’t just add a link to the poll wars post of earlier this week, which catalogued the brouhaha on the 21st - I thought passages like this deserved a post of their own:

Dennis Shanahan is an experienced journalist, yet his experience was sidelined by
his yearning for more Howard. He was comprehensively shown up by people going
by names like Possum Comitatus, Poll Bludger and Mumble. People smarter than him,
people who knew more about voting patterns than he did, people who all but stole
the bread and butter out of his mouth.

That’s about the least combative part of that post, by the way.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve all got his feed in your readers already. If you haven’t, and you’d like to see how excoriating intelligent, informed blogospheric voices can be, get over there.

UPDATE THURSDAY: Yesterday’s post about the “renaissance” of moderate Liberalism, which bounces off an article written by Liberal MP Marise Payne, is simply a classic of Elder’s idiosyncratic style.

blogging, media blogging, journalism, media, poll wars, The Australian

Among the consequences of the emergence of the opinion-led blogosphere are, on the one hand, news organisations bringing prominent bloggers “inside the tent”, and on the other, presenting their op-ed writers work in a “blog-like” format. Whether you think that’s just due recognition of the affordances of blogging and the ’sphere’s emerging talent, or lip service and the co-optation of alternative voices will depend on what you think blogging is for.

What’s interesting to me is that, in turn, this allows differences of opinion within media organisations to emerge pretty well instantaneously. Today, for instance, Blogocracy’s Tim Dunlop has done a long post about his disagreeement with the underlying logic of a column by Malcolm Colless, published in this morning’s Australian.

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blogging, media blogging, Bolt, Dunlop, journalism, media, news.com.au, poll wars, psephology, The Australian