John Naughton writing in The Observer today takes an insightful look at why bloggers and mainstream journalists complement each other. He uses as a peg for his column a new Harvard study of the 2002 episode of US Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's remarks at the 100th party of Strom Thurmond, longest-serving senator. Lott applauded Thurmond's 1948 'Dixiecrat' segregationist stance and ended up losing his post because (in part) of bloggers. It's an interesting story - but what I found behind John's column interested me just as much. First the Lott-Thurmond story.
Lott's remarks were briefly reported by ABC News, but not then followed by other media. However, bloggers took up the issue, media interest revived, President Bush intervened and Lott was forced to stand down as majority leader. John says there was some crowing from bloggers at the time about their influence; the Harvard study now offers a more balanced assessment of "the emerging symbiotic relationship between mainstream journalism and blogging." The story wasn't followed at the time because, in part, those present at the party were mainly Washington insiders who didn't see it as much of a story - including most of the journalists. Although the story surfaced, other media didn't give it legs because they couldn't get (or didn't try hard enough) to get reactions. Bloggers, on the other hand, work in a different culture. A journalist threw them the bone, and they kept chewing.
My first reading of John's column was to think a) good to see some sensible analysis of blogging in the business section of The Observer but b) this is all a bit old hat. Even a quick Google on blogging and journalism throws up a wealth of links over the past few years. Print columns are dated, and can't even give you the links. Huh! Blogging is better....
But then I followed the URL at the bottom of John's column which leads to 'foonotes' that are back-up to his columns from 1999. In that he gives the link for a pdf of the Harvard study and research for earlier columns.
More interesting still are links to John's main blog, and elsewhere, showing he is well-up on blogging and much else, and runs a short course at the Open University on Relevant Knowledge "an evolving programme of user-friendly short courses about various aspects of technology. The courses are designed to be accessible to anyone - you don't need to be a techie to study them."
John has written A brief history of the Future: the origins of the Internet and he turns out to be "a control engineer with a strong interest in systems analysis and computer networks" who is Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology, and has also been a journalist since his student days. There's lots of that here.
So what seemed to be a slightly behind-the-times piece by a print columnist writing about an academic study of journalism and blogging, turns out to be the means by which a well-versed academic, blogger and journalist can get his mainstream editor and readers interested in the cross-overs between journalism, blogging and academia. John comments that the Harvard study "provides a realistic picture of how our media ecology is changing..."
We could say the same thing about his column, which is appropriately headed "Power to the Bloggers? That's only half the story".
I found it easy to discover the other half of the story that ultimately interested me most - John's different roles - because of the link at the bottom of the column. Most people, I suspect, won't follow that. Should we expect a footnote at the end of the column to the effect that John is Professor of Public Understand of Technology? After all the meaning and weight of what we read and view come substantially from the source and medium. We need to know where people are coming from, and that's why editors put footnotes to feature articles and columns indicating when the authors have specialist knowledge, or special interests. If they don't, we should be able to assume they are relatively independent, or evidently expressing a personal opinion.
In the case of John's column, I like the fact that he hasn't paraded his Professorship. I think the URL is enough. Nice style. Authentic. But that's another story.
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