Are bloggers journalists?

by News Sources on December 22, 2011

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Mario December 23, 2011 at 10:32 am: Interesting topic — Blogging had a first peak in the early 2000′s, when some high quality work was released ( especially in art/lit circles). But very quickly, the net was flooded with poor quality blogs, when everyone wanted to be ‘famous’, and aped the appearance of a good page.

Since then, it has settled into an even balance, and now, everyone I know considers the best blogs ( ICH, ‘War in Context’, a few others, and some regular youtube channels ) are far far superior to the mainstream news. The BBC is increasingly amateur and biased, and toothlessly timid. The same is true with the Guardian, which very,very occasionally has a good article, but most of it is gatekeeper spin, half truths, think tank propaganda, and nonsense, written by Oxford and Cambridge upper middle class Londoners.

The mainstream — besides Robert Fisk’s excellent Independent column and ‘Democracy Now’ — is so far behind the loop, and so far behind what intelligent ,thoughtful readers want.
Mario December 24, 2011 at 1:58 am: P.S. A prime example of how deeply mediocre and irrelevant the mainstream press are, is the fact that in today’s Guardian, one of the leading comment/editorial page articles on the subject of Afghanistan, war, and acceptance of violence — is actually written by a young sports columnist who normally writes about Beckham and Manchester United.

Nothing wrong with that on one level of course — but , the problem is, that these editorial figures in the Guardian/BBC etc, are presented to us as elevated, elite figures , who know more about the subject than the general public, and therefore, we should be listening to them, and the implication is that we should be ‘guided’ and ‘enlightened’ by them, given our opinions by them.

And yet, why should we take these figures seriously at all? In fact, clearly, these media hacks from Oxford and Cambridge and LSE feel threatened by the independent bloggers and youtube pages — after all, it was the awful Blair/Iraq apologist and servant of power, Andrew Marr, who sniffily proclaimed that “bloggers are ‘inadequate, pimpled and single’ and ‘that citizen journalists will never replace real news.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/11/andrew-marr-bloggers

Incredible — but given the choice between ICH, ‘War In Context’ and the BBC — which do you think intelligent people would select?

And my guess is that people like Andrew Marr know it.

The question is, why is it that hundreds and thousands of people are not simply just turning off the BBC , and not buying The Times and The Guardian? That is the question I don’t understand. I was a little slow, and only really began to see how severe the spin was in the mainstream, ( even in the ‘quality’ newspapers) about ten years ago, when I was in my late 30′s. I had read and studied a lot — why did it take me so long to work it out?

I’d love to see the figures and stats. which clearly show how many people have turned away from the mainstream press, and see alternative sources instead.

Anyone have a webpage with the numbers/stats? I’d love to see them.