Association for Journalism Education

18 June 2009

City University

Tell you about the blog

Give you my take on political reporting

Thoughts on the business economics of blogging and news

making My take on the digital future

Criticisms of blogging

Guido's Mission : Narcissism and personal

amusement Mischief making

Despair with the political class Despair with the Lobby system

Despair with Private Eye, “Fiskers” Unwanted on Samizdata

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September 2004 Total monthly hits 600 September 2005 Total monthly hits 27,000 Latest 3,600,000 hits

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May 2009

Guido’s blog is political scandal central No pretence to objectivity

Guido is aimed at journalists, Westminster insiders, wonks,

politicians, the Lobby, activists, spin doctors and broadcast media

During Tory and LibDem leadership battles crucial point of information for

activists Killed Hain’s deputy leadership

campaign

Insider / Outsider? Guido has some credibility

More Drudge than Wonkette Will be like Rush to Bush under Tories

Journalists in the beginning gave Guido tips

No longer. Guido sells to papers front pages

Blogging journalists new competition Diarists were Guido's main competition

Press Plagiarist of the Year Award

Why Smeargate went to the papers

and not on Guido’s blog first.

Why Smeargate went to the papers: Wife is a feisty cautious lawyer

Downing Street spinning “security threat”

Legal issues over copyright and the manner in which the emails were

obtained Whistleblower laws exclude “for profit”

Maximise the impact

The Lobby is an obedience school:

Come to heel and you get titbits.

How many political journalists can really hold their head up high?

Cowardice and cronyism run right through the Lobby, fearful of being taken off the teat of

pre-packaged stories served to them. That is not journalism; that is copytaking.

Thoughts on the business

of news and blogging.

No real general money making model in UK for bloggers currently

Popbitch and Guido are viable businesses

Blogging plus traditional media pays enough

Iain Dale does punditry / Guido sells stories

Tech blogs make good money Some “specialist” blogs make money

MessageSpace blog advertising network data• The single highest paid blogger had sales

on average of £3,872 per month

• The top 10% of bloggers had monthly sales averaging £2,861 in (Q4 ‘08) a rise of 64%

from £1,741 last year (Q4 ’07).

• The middle 40% of bloggers had average monthly sales of £351.

• The remaining 50% had average monthly sales of £54.

"How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths", by Glenn Reynolds. This is the 21st century, the days of media conglomerates making the news in a top-down Fordist fashion are over. Boutique news sources will proliferate.

The "news" is no longer what Paxman says it is, the news is whatever is disseminated to a wide audience, Big Media is going to be disintermediated when it falls down because technology has drastically reduced the cost of dissemination. Failing to hold our political class to account is the failing of Big Media in Britain.

First they sneered

Then they feared

Don't worry, be happy, there will still be news journalism without newspapers

Video blogging is the future Podcasting is so yesterday

The Press will be pixellated not print Newsrooms will survive, newspapers

won’t, they will be news brands More people read Guido than read

Private Eye, Hislop is wrong

Answering critics of blogging

You get things wrong Unfiltered

Noise to signal / ratio

The comments are profane etc.

You are beyond the reach of libel laws

Platform for wannabee journalists

That is a feature not a bug Comment costs nothing and a lot of

paid for comment is rubbish filler News costs a lot to do professionally, maybe NGOs and campaigns can do it

on the cheap

Unaccountable and unedited:

Accountable to readers Sub-editing is crowd-sourced

Final thoughts: US has more paid bloggers than

lawyers Read what was written about the Fourth

Estate and the coffee house pamphleteers of yore, the same is now

said of bloggers. Newspaper journalism isn’t something

sacred, it is a business.

A business that is failing.