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Archive for Online Media
The Power of the Commentariat. Or Perhaps Not: Blog Platform
A couple of days ago I drew your attention to a seminar to launch a report by Editorial Intelligence called “The Power of the Commentariat”. Or rather, they have launched half of it and expect the public to buy the rest from Amazon
It’s an interesting document and I’d like to do a review of the whole thing. I have asked Editorial Intelligence for a review copy of the whole document. If one is not forthcoming, I shall review the half of the report that they have seen fit to release.
Listening to the podcast of the seminar, there are a number of moments of “Don Quixote” incongruity. However, if you want to skip the fun, and just hear what I think - then go to the next section.
The Emperor with no clothes gives advice on dress sense
Golly, Polly!
Polly Toynbee whinged complained about bloggers launching “vituperative” and “personal” attacks on her. Perhaps she thought noone had read her vituperative and personal attacks on numerous targets.
Has anyone read Polly on Boris these last few weeks, or Polly on the Archishop of Canterbury six months ago, or on any number of different people at different times?
That’s why she’s such good value for bloggers. If she didn’t exist, we’d have to invent her.
Charles “how dare you intrude into my private life” Clarke
Charles Clarke complaining about doorstepping by journalists.
This is a politician in a cabinet which passed all manner of unnecessary restrictions on liberty from the right to demonstrate, through DNA profiling of the innocent with no effective redress, via compliance with Extraordinary Rendition, to an Extradition Treaty allowing British Citizens to be yanked out of their daily lives by foreign judges to face trial in the United States on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.
Forgive me, Mr Clarke, if my sympathy for you is limited.
Again, Charles Clarke on the unfairness of anonymously expressed views
Charles Clarke complaining about anyone putting forward a viewpoint anonymously.
Er, sorry, Mr Clarke - but I thought that anonymous briefings (and bullying) were used relentlessly by the New Labour administration (of which you were a key part) as a tool for media manipulation.
What do they think of bloggers?
Quite a lot of ill-informed nonsense, but some people “Get it” (Danny Finkelstein and others) or nearly get it (Julia Hobsbawm among them).
Bloggers are dreadful horrible nasty vindictive followers of Guido Fawkes
Columnists are specifically described as being of “different types”, but bloggers are apparently all the same and we are all “followers” of Guido Fawkes (wonder what Professor Norm, Tim Ireland, Natalie and The F-Word would say about that).
And, regardless of the vitriol poured on him, Guido has done some superb work - my favourite is the the exposure of Peter Hain’s attempt to drive a double decker bendybus through the rules and principles supposed to govern elections in his own party.
He had also entertained us from time to time by getting the things hilariously wrong from time to time (one word: Newsnight).
Bloggers are all the same
A very, very funny comment.
Anybody who says that has not mastered their brief to comment on bloggers. It has a “whole class of Japanese students out on bicycles in Cambridge for the first time going the wrong way round a traffic island, knowing they are wrong but being too scared to go back” feel about it (ack. Bishop of Maidstone). I’d suggest working harder and getting out more.
Bloggers are Masculine
This was a statement from Julia Hobsbawm in the closing conversation. Certainly most are, but there is no male monopoly - even in politics.
My thoughts?
The Commentariat (as represented in this podcast) seem to be having a few problems getting to grips with the blogging medium - in particular coping with the diversity.
How can they cope with the plethora of blogs? Have they “got to read” all of this? (yes you do - at least enough of it enough times to develop a familiarity sufficient to make a sensible judgement).
The Internet is stuffed with automatic tools to help you get to grips with the flow of comment, including aggregators, specialised search engines (www.technorati.com, Google news and blog search), and services to try and judge what is important (www.technorati.com again, www.wikio.com).
The UK Political Blogosphere is also heavily summarised if you know where to look. How many columnists heave heard of the Britblog Roundup, the Scottish Roundup, the Welsh Blog Index, Cassilis’s roundup of think tanks, and the numerous other “signposts” that are published every week? Hopefully at least some know about these various “roundups”.
If they aren’t familiar with these tools then - again - it’s a matter of getting out more and working at it a bit. That’s not exactly difficult.
And I haven’t even mentioned RSS and RSS Readers (Google Reader, Feed Demon to name one online and one offline reader).
Even Danny Finkelstein - who writes a fantastic blog at Comment Central - quoted the “Cover it Live” chatroom service (btw, Danny, it IS moderated) as potentially useful. The fact is that chatrooms have existed for years and years and years; when I was diagnosed with Diabetes a regular chatroom meetup was one way I learnt to cope - that was in 2001, and they were old then. The problem here is mainly that there has been too much conservatism to use them appropriately. There are dozens of tools out there - sites just need the minimal knowledge to use them and the willingness to take a slight risk as to what will happen.
if I was a struggling columnist floundering in a sea of blog comment, I would make a point of taking Jemima Kiss or Chris Vallance (or me!) out for a long, expensive lunch to quiz them on how to read blogs the easy way.
Wrapping Up
Guido and Iain have commented on the Power of the Commentariat “do”.
And Guido is making a feature of holding columnists to account. A good idea, but it needs more than just him.
Iain has commented more sympathetically on the report itself.
In the meantime you can listen to the podcast here, and download half the report here.
Editorial Intelligence’s service was quoted as an example of a site helping people get to grips with online comment. I disagree - it is expensively paid for and therefore helps maintain an “in-crowd”.
I’m wondering if the Editorial Intelligence Model is now way past it’s sell by date - given that summaries of most of the stuff written by commentators and columnists is now syndicated via RSS. I wonder whether MySociety could build us something better for the whole world - not just those who can afford the subscriptions - to use if someone gave them £5k and a month.
The thing that the Commentariat actually need to do is to shatter their “bubble on a pedestal” from the inside before it gets shattered for them from the outside.
I’ll follow this article with a review of the full report, or half the report - depending on what is made available to me.
You can get the first half at the link above, and the second half of The Power of the Commentariat
And a slight apology - I have not linked absolutely everything in this article as I am away from home.
Free Penguin Classics Book in Return for Review
Penguin Classics are giving away 1400 books.
You have to promise to review it on your blog.
More details are here. The signup form is here .
via The Yorkshire Gob.
Welsh Political Comment on Twitter
As a trial I have set up a Twitter Feed of headlines from the Welsh Political Comment blog aggregator. Comments would be more than welcome.
I quite like the fact that the headlines go straight through to the original blog article, rather than via the politics-wales.co.uk website.
The Twitter Feed is configured to deliver a maximum of 5 headlines every half hour. That means that some may be missed, but is a limitation I cannot control without changing my service.
You can find the Twitter Feed at www.twitter.com/politics_wales (that is politics<underscore>wales - Twitter ban hyphens in account names).
I would welcome any comments (using the spiffy new comment features added to the Wardman Wire last weekend).
Beijing Olympics “It’s a Human Rights Knockout”: New from China
I’m delighted to announce that the Wardman Wire will be presenting an “It’ a Knockout Special” on Friday 8th April - to celebrate the Chinese Government’s efforts at .. er .. Knocking Out Human Rights.
A number of events will be featured, including the The Team London Marathon Obstacle Course (featured below).
Other events include worldwide celebrations:
- The Rolling of the Tumbrils in Paris.
- Impromptu All-in Wrestling between Chinese Security Guards and the Public.
And some Beijing Olympics events taking place in China itself, and in other places that are alleged to be part of China:
- Sweeping Undesirables off the Streets.
- “Moving Target Marksmanship” Shooting at Tibetan Monks.
- Synchronised Marching (suggested by Ian Whickham).
Event Suggestions
If you would like to suggest an event, just make a comment below -with an explanation (and ideally a video) or post an article on your own blog and link back. Then I will feature your event on Friday.
Let the Games begin.
(A few glitches with this post - sorry. Now sorted.)
Tags: beijing olympics, china olumpics, free tibet, it’s a knockout
[tags]beijing olympics, china olumpics, free tibet, it’s a knockout[/tags]
Politics Home Index launches “Bloomberg for Politics”
The new website “Politics Home” has come online this morning, with a website which is probably best described as a “window onto current political affairs”. Here is a screenshot of the initial web page.
Key Features
The site will not be producing a lot of content itself - rather it will be mainly providing feeds of others’ headlines, with daily surveys and numerical analysis from a “panel of political insiders” (which includes - among others - Iain Dale and Anthony Barnett).
On a quick evaluation, we have:
- A “news wire” of blog headlines.
- A panel of current stories, with a nifty sliding-panel arrangement to index different reports of each story (it takes a bit of getting used to).
- A guide to the events today in the broadcast and printed media, with images of newspaper front pages.
- Categorised news and comment by party, and also by business / culture / science / sport.
- A wire of latest political video.
- An index to online comment and analysis.
- And then a look at the news through a series of “numerical lenses”, ranging from analysis based on the “panel” to a count of column inches for different press stories,
- At first glance, there seem to be quite good archive facilities.
Problems - Nothing Serious
There are also a couple of technical glitches, but I would expect these to be fixed quickly.
Wrapping-Up
I can see the site becoming a good place to find stories, and that many people may use it as their “home page”.
Although I did a small job for PHI back at the turn of the year, I have not seen the final design until now (except for the mockup that was revealed via a comment on Dizzy’s blog back in February) - so I will be doing a more detailed assessment just before lunchtime today.
It feels like quite a “heavy” front page - but I will look at that in more detail later on this morning.
Interestingly, there are no significant web 2.0 features (as far as I can tell) - not even the ability to comment on stories.
Go and have a look, and let me know what you think.
Tags: politics home index, politics home, the green box, stefan shakespeare
Accessibility and Useability on the Wardman Wire
Accessibility and Useability are two features which are necessary for a website in 2008 to be successful, but not sufficient on their own.
Bendy Girl asked about the accessibility features of the designs I am looking at for the Wardman Wire:
I like the light background too, I always find dark backgrounds difficult on the eye and so navigate away very quickly. There are also wider issues re visual impairment/disability access which might be worth considering.
I’ve changed the live copies of both sites to the lighter theme so that you can have a better look.
On the wider questions, the new front end is (I am told) fully “XHTML” compliant. That means that it *should* be useable with things like screen readers - although they will struggle with a layout that has so many different areas.
When I’m closer to putting it up, I’ll look at features such as Access Keys and the possibility of making a “high contrast” theme-available.
I *could* look at a built in feature to make a read-out copy of each article available as a podcast - but I always feel that that is a bit unnecessary given the existence of screen readers.
An example of a blogger who does that is Andy Carvin, who has a blog called “Waste of Bandwidth”.
Thinking about it, it should be easy to allow the user to switch between “dark” and “light” themes.
Tags: accessibility, theme switch, access keys, high contrast, visual impairment, useability
Further comments are welcome.
Growing Pains: What happens when your blog becomes a little bigger?
There’s an excellent short interview with a “Blog Producer” from Weblogs Inc. by Darren Rowse over at Problogger. It points up a few of the issues that arise and skills that are needed to take a blog from being the “voice of one person” to being a slightly larger enterprise - with a range of voices, or covering a range of niches.
Blog Support Staff?
In Weblogs Inc. I’d define the role of Blog Producer like this:
“The back room bod responsible for ensuring that everything is in place to make sure that those writing for one or more blogs can do their jobs as easily and as well as possible”.
or - to put it another way - the person who lets the other people do their jobs.
I’ll quote one question and answer here, but you’ll have to follow the link below to read the whole interview:
Darren: Do you have any advice or tips for smaller to medium sized blogs that want to step up in terms of professionalism and growth?
Victor: Building a team is crucial, always. Once you grow beyond just yourself, it is important to have a talent pool who can bring a variety of skills to the table. This usually means a level of tech-savvy (people shouldn’t be afraid of wikis or simple HTML) plus a certain level of management ability. There also gets a point where you need someone focusing on sales!
