Danny Whatmough.com

A few months back, I blogged about how writer Paul Carr had been sacked by the Guardian due to freelancer budget cuts. At the time, I said:

“…it is yet another indictment of the decline of ‘traditional media’ and the power and rise of bloggers and media ‘personalities’ who don’t need a publishing house behind them to be successful. And that’s great for people like Carr. It’s harder though for less forthright journalists.”

And I was right. Carr is still writing his next book, publishing on his blog and has since secured two new columns. One with pro-blog Techcrunch and the other with the Telegraph.

The latter always seemed a weird fit, but it was good to see the Telegraph taking a few more risks (which it certainly was with Carr!). But then yesterday Carr announced – surprise, surprise – that the Telegraph has terminated his contract. The reason given by his boss:

“I’ve been looking at the latest traffic figures for your blog and also our budget and how we’re spending it. And I’m afraid I’ve reached the conclusion that your time blogging with us should come to an end… Our limited budget just cannot sustain these sums without a bigger bang for our buck.”

You can read the rest of Carr’s post to get his full (and colourful) reaction to his sacking. But it’s the reason given that is interesting to me. As Carr says:

“I short, I wasn’t driving enough pageviews to justify what they were paying me.”

Should we be surprised that this is potentially all that seems to matter for journalism now? Should we be concerned? These are after all commercial companies, with commercial concerns.

Perhaps this is why, for me, ‘personal’ blogging is becoming so important. By this I don’t mean Techcrunch or even Paul Carr. I mean the thousands that blog every now and then, even the millions that post on microblogs like Twitter. Those that share their thoughts and ideas.

They aren’t driven by page views or sensationalist headlines.  They aren’t ruled by the ‘media agenda’ or corporate, PR-speak.

This is why the democratisation of media is so important, especially considering the way more and more professional media outlets seem to be going. I hope the professional media stays strong and survives, I think it is vital. But I’m excited by the new brand of journalism just as much.

Does the sight of hundreds of pages of comments on an article fill you with dread? Do you get fed up of reading the same comment again and again and again?

I read an interesting article today on TechCrunch by Nicolas Holzapfel. Nicholas claims that comment sections have become unruly and rarely add anything particularly constructive to an article because of the way they are structured:

“Lots of comments amounts to an enormous long list of entirely unstructured text. There are no dividers or subheadings, no logical progression of arguments or groupings of opinion and no distinction between unique, intelligent insights and throwaway expressions of approval and opposition. Because nobody can be bothered to read through such a mess before they add their own comment, there isn’t even the structure of a coherent conversation. Instead, there is endless, pointless repetition; conversations emerge, peter out and then re-emerge 50 comments later with new participants who haven’t noticed that the same issues were discussed 50 comments ago.” (his emphasis)

And I largely agree with this. When you get mainstream articles with lots of comments, I will instinctively read the first few and then skim the rest. I will rarely go onto a second page and never to a third.

So what is the answer?

From the looks of things, Nicholas clearly believes that his startup – Yoomoot – will provide the solution, but it is hard to tell from the website exactly how or why!

I’m a fan of Disqus (used on this blog) and the service mentioned in the article – Echo, a real-time comment engine – also looks interesting. However, neither service really solves the specific problem Nicholas highlights.

Should comments be subjected to more editorial control? Should there be more social or Digg-style elements where visitors can vote up popular comments (the BBC website does this, for example)? Perhaps the eagerly anticipated Google Wave will help with more ‘Wiki’-like technology allowing visitors to manage and control comment sections in a more democratic way.

Surely this is an aspect of blogging that is ripe for innovation and fresh thinking?

There’s lots of digital news going on today and so it would be easy to miss a blogging story that should really be given more attention. The Times has reported that it has won a landmark verdict in the High Court allowing the paper to reveal the identity of police-blogger NightJack.

The verdict has forced the blogger to close the site and delete the content.

The NightJack blog describes described, worts and all, on-the-beat policing, featuring some stinging attacks on the organisation and the government. But it was the insights into everyday policing that lead the blog and the blogger to be awarded an Orwell Prize in April. As a Guardian editorial put it:

“This is life as the police see it. Read it, even if only to disagree.”

Well, disagree The Times did and reporting on the case it disclosed:

“In the first case dealing with the privacy of internet bloggers, the judge ruled that Mr xx had no “reasonable expectation” to anonymity because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”.”

Blogger Zoe Margolis who was also unmasked by the same newspaper blogs:

“There will be others, of course, who’ll applaud this judge’s ruling for upholding “freedom of information” and “openness and transparency” for the “public interest” stories covered by journalists.  But those of us who have chosen to be anonymous online, have done so with good reason; so after losing my own anonymity, and experiencing first hand the ruthless behaviour of some elements of the press, I will continue to fight for the right of other bloggers to keep their identity hidden.”

For some anonymity empowers them to say and expose things they might not otherwise say or expose, as Jemima Kiss states, “there are occasions when anonymity is a powerful and necessary tool and a right that protects whistleblowers and brings important issues to light. A blanket ruling that disregards that right is very bad news indeed.”

I’m not au fait with the political and legal ranglings of the case but I do know that at a time when bloggers are exposing great injustices in the world, it is sometimes necessary to write behind a veil in order to reveal what is really happening.

Like every good tech geek, I’m a bit of a magpie when it comes to shiny new things, especially online. So you can imagine my glee when (via Drew) I came across Feedly today.

I love it!

I’m pretty addicted to my feedreader. And my weapon of choice has been Google Reader ever since I started reading blogs. I’ve tried and tested every pretender to the reader-throne, but I haven’t ever been really tempted to migrate my RSS feeds. This is partly due to the inconvenience of moving; the new features would have to be very convincing.

And this is part why Feedly is so great. Its not really a feed reader itself – it’s a Firefox plugin. It simply sits on top of Google Reader and acts as an alternative skin or dashboard. You can still share or star items, add or remove feeds and even change categories. But, in addition, it makes it easier to add posts to social networks and email or tweet interesting snippets.

And it plugs into your existing networks to recommend and suggest content.

You can also use Feedly mini – a little pop-up overlay that appears at the bottom right of every webpage you visit to inform you about how socially-connected the page is and it also allows you to tweet or email content quickly and easily.

All-in-all, a great little tool.

Interesting post from Wendy McAuliffe looking at how the trade press are (or aren’t) using blogs:

“What’s apparent is that some trade publishers have been nervous about blog content undermining the value of their magazine and online editorial, often failing to grasp where blogging can add value.”

The two examples she cites are particularly telling. NMA and Revolution are titles you would expect to be leading the way, and yet they aren’t. Revolution were very late to the party earlier this year and NMA still aren’t really there (although look out for a newly launched nma.co.uk on Monday…complete with a blog? Who knows?).

But, as Wendy says, there are obvious concerns for publishers whose history is steeped in print.

For me though, it does seem a bizarre and dangerous tactic.

Whilst these ‘giants’ are sleeping, a whole array of ‘amateur’ bloggers are springing up, gathering followers and writing some great stuff. The trad media may still be able to catch up, but what damage has already been done?

The same could be said of the PR industry’s own bible – PR Week. Despite its recent obsession about Twitter and the quoting of blogs in the magazine, the website is hardly 2.0 (and that’s not even discussing the pay wall it has in place – for which I keep forgetting the password!).

And perhaps the problem lies in the fact that these are big publications, ruled by big publishing houses, which find it difficult to ‘change’. And when they do decide to change, it takes time.

Revolution has its new website, Retail Week launched its new site yesterday and NMA has its turn on Monday.

These are all steps in the right direction. But where is the innovation? Are the steps too small and too late?