I really am fed up with people expecting something to happen on British blogs. It isn’t, and I don’t care.
I’m fed up with people waiting for somebody to get sacked due to a blog here. It’s not going to happen, cos the tabloids get everybody sacked for no good reason anyway.
I am sick fed up with people who wonder, “How are blogs going to affect the election?” That’s a bit like asking, “How will chats on the bus affect the election?”
If British blogs were even remotely as shite as American blogs, I would beat my chest and foam at the mouth so much that the saliva gets all over my point. I would post a picture of my cat every Friday — and I don’t even have a cat. I would start one of those bloody stupid ‘open threads’ every five minutes (man, that’s what message boards are for. Set up a message board for crying out loud).
If you want journalism, here is an idea: buy a newspaper. The idea that blogs will kill off newspapers is pure nonsense. Bloggers rely on the mainstream media no matter how little they like to admit it. Maybe that relationship will become increasingly two-way. But newspapers will always be around. Although I don’t read any newspapers (except online), I think that if things happened the other way — with everything in electronic form originally — a handy digest of the day’s news in hard-copy form would be seen as a great innovation.
The fact that it is a two-way relationship is emphasised by the fact that mainstream media outlets have been able to do blogging quite well. No matter how much some of the more pious bloggers like to sniff at them, blogs from newspapers can work well. The Guardian is the obvious example, but the BBC has also come up with the goods. It might not feel so much like a blog, but I really like these little five-minute stories that just seem to get bashed out in the reporters’ spare time. Some of it has been the most entertaining reading during the election.
Does this mean that bloggers have failed? No. Duncan Stephen in his house isn’t going to get those types of stories, and nor could you expect that. For me, I blog because I occasionally have opinions and links that I like to share. I read blogs because I love to read the opinions and follow the links that others want to share. I do not read blogs because I think they’re headline news. Blogging is like a massive chat in a massive pub. It’s not the future of everything. And that’s precisely why I like it.