CULTURE
-----------------------------------------The Rise of the Blog
-----------------------------------------
You know a craze has arrived when it creates its own news stories and the past couple of months have seen several headlines inspired by blogs. First George Clooney slammed The Huffington Post blog for posting patched-together material under his name without his approval. Then The Guardian heaped pressure onto all the other national dailies by launching the first online rolling news blog under the title 'Comment is Free'. Furthermore, an anonymous female Iraqi blogger found the hard copy collection of her posts added to the shortlist for the £30,000 Samuel Johnson book award. Blogs, it seems, have well and truly arrived.
But as blogs pop up all over the place, the power of their voice is yet to be decided. Generally the majority of bloggers are active because they feel their views are poorly represented through traditional means (readers' letters, local MPs etc), thus their blog is a way of projecting their voice further than the corner of their street. But how many people are listening? And does raising your voice through a blog change anything in the long term?
A sure sign of blogging power comes with scalps and there have been some on both sides of the Atlantic. But the size of these scalps goes a long way to emphasising the difference in blogging power in the UK and the US. In the US veteran journalist Dan Rather was forced to step down as anchor of the CBS evening news, taking three producers with him, after bloggers investigated the evidence for a piece on George Bush's service in the armed forces. The bloggers found that the document, said to have dated back to the early 70s, had to have been produced on a modern PC due to the advanced fonts and formatting - the sort of priceless investigation newspapers in the US have been accused of ditching in a bid to cut costs. The resignation made front page news across the country.
Contrastingly, the only scalp to date in the UK caused little more than a ripple in the British press. On September 8 last year The Guardian ran a comment piece by a little known reporter of theirs, Dilpazier Aslam, headlined 'We Rock the Boat' about a change in the British Muslim culture where by the younger generations were less intimidated in voicing their opinions and feelings - citing the July bombers' British nationality as being unsurprising. But what at first seemed an uncontroversial piece was immediately picked up by left wing blogs, most notably the popular Harry's Place, and Aslam was soon revealed as a member of the radical Islamist political party Hizb ut-Tahrir. Although this was already known by his employers the online kerfuffle put pressure on The Guardian to give Aslam an ultimatum: his position as a reporter or that as a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. When this ultimatum was finally given Aslam chose the latter and left the newspaper's staff.
However, even with the limited success of the UK blogosphere's first political scalp, are the bloggers confident enough people are listening to them? I asked Mike Bennett, whose blog is one of the better known in the UK, via Comment is Free, how important it was for individuals to make their feelings known in the virtual world, whether anyone actually took any notice and whether he had any concrete evidence that anything was changing because of blogs like his.
"I suppose I'm hopeful rather than having real and concrete evidence - and it is still early days for blogs. But what I've found from recent blogging and also from email conversations with well-known journalists and a prominent New Labourite is that it feels like I can be heard - whereas previously I just felt frustrated at the way everything is going without a way to express that. Similarly with [Comment is Free], I replied to Tony Juniper's (Director of Friends of the Earth) comment piece on the budget and hopefully he will read it."
"But as to the ultimate effect - I don't know - but it seems to me vital that more is heard from ordinary people as a check on the wayward course our politicians and business leaders steer. And blogs are just one way. The danger with many people's disengagement with the political process means that the politicians can take our silence to be consent!"
So it seems the blogging culture will continue to rise in the UK regardless of its power. But one popular theory as to why the US bloggers have quickly gained more power than their British counterparts is based around the difference in the political landscapes of both countries. In the US there is a feeling among many liberal voters that their political system fails them - cynicism that fuels the belief that too much money is involved at the top of US politics for the Republicans or the Democrats to work any differently while in government. This had led to a culture of abstention rather than debate, leaving great gaps of the political landscape ignored. But with blogs, this quiet mass of views can now be covered online and they are done so vigorously.
This obvious void of commentary doesn't exist in the UK, with a wider number of views present in government, even now when the parties carry more overlapping policies than ever. The UK press also carries much wider opinion than that in the US with the Guardian often carrying comment from well known liberals like Noam Chomsky on the same pages as former Daily Telegraph editor Max Hastings. With less scope to work with, 2006 will play an integral part in how blogs develop as a medium in the UK.
But as blogs pop up all over the place, the power of their voice is yet to be decided. Generally the majority of bloggers are active because they feel their views are poorly represented through traditional means (readers' letters, local MPs etc), thus their blog is a way of projecting their voice further than the corner of their street. But how many people are listening? And does raising your voice through a blog change anything in the long term?
A sure sign of blogging power comes with scalps and there have been some on both sides of the Atlantic. But the size of these scalps goes a long way to emphasising the difference in blogging power in the UK and the US. In the US veteran journalist Dan Rather was forced to step down as anchor of the CBS evening news, taking three producers with him, after bloggers investigated the evidence for a piece on George Bush's service in the armed forces. The bloggers found that the document, said to have dated back to the early 70s, had to have been produced on a modern PC due to the advanced fonts and formatting - the sort of priceless investigation newspapers in the US have been accused of ditching in a bid to cut costs. The resignation made front page news across the country.
Contrastingly, the only scalp to date in the UK caused little more than a ripple in the British press. On September 8 last year The Guardian ran a comment piece by a little known reporter of theirs, Dilpazier Aslam, headlined 'We Rock the Boat' about a change in the British Muslim culture where by the younger generations were less intimidated in voicing their opinions and feelings - citing the July bombers' British nationality as being unsurprising. But what at first seemed an uncontroversial piece was immediately picked up by left wing blogs, most notably the popular Harry's Place, and Aslam was soon revealed as a member of the radical Islamist political party Hizb ut-Tahrir. Although this was already known by his employers the online kerfuffle put pressure on The Guardian to give Aslam an ultimatum: his position as a reporter or that as a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. When this ultimatum was finally given Aslam chose the latter and left the newspaper's staff.
However, even with the limited success of the UK blogosphere's first political scalp, are the bloggers confident enough people are listening to them? I asked Mike Bennett, whose blog is one of the better known in the UK, via Comment is Free, how important it was for individuals to make their feelings known in the virtual world, whether anyone actually took any notice and whether he had any concrete evidence that anything was changing because of blogs like his.
"I suppose I'm hopeful rather than having real and concrete evidence - and it is still early days for blogs. But what I've found from recent blogging and also from email conversations with well-known journalists and a prominent New Labourite is that it feels like I can be heard - whereas previously I just felt frustrated at the way everything is going without a way to express that. Similarly with [Comment is Free], I replied to Tony Juniper's (Director of Friends of the Earth) comment piece on the budget and hopefully he will read it."
"But as to the ultimate effect - I don't know - but it seems to me vital that more is heard from ordinary people as a check on the wayward course our politicians and business leaders steer. And blogs are just one way. The danger with many people's disengagement with the political process means that the politicians can take our silence to be consent!"
So it seems the blogging culture will continue to rise in the UK regardless of its power. But one popular theory as to why the US bloggers have quickly gained more power than their British counterparts is based around the difference in the political landscapes of both countries. In the US there is a feeling among many liberal voters that their political system fails them - cynicism that fuels the belief that too much money is involved at the top of US politics for the Republicans or the Democrats to work any differently while in government. This had led to a culture of abstention rather than debate, leaving great gaps of the political landscape ignored. But with blogs, this quiet mass of views can now be covered online and they are done so vigorously.
This obvious void of commentary doesn't exist in the UK, with a wider number of views present in government, even now when the parties carry more overlapping policies than ever. The UK press also carries much wider opinion than that in the US with the Guardian often carrying comment from well known liberals like Noam Chomsky on the same pages as former Daily Telegraph editor Max Hastings. With less scope to work with, 2006 will play an integral part in how blogs develop as a medium in the UK.
