Oliver Kamm

Blogging about blogging is about as interesting as Jack McConnell but occasionally I break my silence on these issues.

Oliver Kamm, formerly a 'blogger' of some note (I'm not sure someone who doesn't allow comments is a true blogger - the whole point, I thought, was to encourage interaction - that isn't to criticise those that do not allow comments I just think that it takes something away from the quality of the blog. People can, of course, run their blog however the ruddy fuck they choose) has over recent weeks been putting the boot into political bloggers.

Political blogging has come of age. At least, that was the idea behind the BBC's Newsnight screening of a report by a high-profile blogger who writes under the pseudonym Guido Fawkes.

I'd argue that people like Mr. Kamm making the transition from blogger to Mainstream media suggest that blogging 'came of age' quite some time ago...

His film argued that blogs provided more acute and independent political analysis than traditional journalism, owing to the absence of an editor, proprietor or regulator.

I don't think there is much argument here. If Iain Dale hears a story, he can knock it out there and then - if people like the gossip he peddles they will return to his site over and over again. Bloggers, obviously, are more independent than a newspaper journalist because they don't have deadlines, editors, proprieters etc - they can write what they want, how they want, when they want.

It was a catastrophic performance, mainly because the blogger required continual correction on points of fact.

Any examples Oliver. It's probably best to illustrate your assertion above with one, just one, example. Otherwise, it looks to me that you are playing the man and not the ball.... no? And again, if Fawkes is so rubbish at what he does and needs continual correction (the irony of a Guardian writer poking fun at something needing continual correction is quite wonderful) he a) won't be invited back to Newsnight b) people won't read his blog. But, of course, they do... in great numbers.

I mean a blog was set up just to monitor Polly Toynbee, one of Kamm's erstwhile colleagues, largely because she requires continual correction on points of fact. I suppose, of course, that that is different.

It is a democratic medium, allowing anyone to participate in political debate without an intermediary, at little or no cost.

Ok this is all true.

But it is a direct and not deliberative form of democracy. You need no competence to join in.

In the same way you don't need competence to become involved with a political party, or to fucking vote. But the market regulates this, Oliver. If a blog is rubbish, people won't read it. If a blog is good, people will read it. The Comments section on a blog (although, I forgot, you don't have one) allow the readers to correct or challenge the writer. I have learnt rather a lot from the commenters on my blog and have enjoyed their input. If Toynbee writes yet another piece littered with errors who points it out... certainly not her editor by the looks of things?

To some, that is a virtue. In a recent lecture, the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, pointed to the proliferation of blogs and enthused: "In politics and in the media we've both assumed that we do the talking and the people listen. Now the people are talking back. It's exciting, liberating, challenging and frightening too."

I'm not sure I agree with much Osborne says but I don't think you can argue that blogs have changed how people get their news. More people read Dale than the Speccie. People like Kamm are getting journalistic jobs. Blogs have, over the last year, been making stories before the MSM have. Which begs the question, if blogging is as pervasive as Kamm seems to think - why the hell is he a blogger? Or is it an extension of the age old leftist argument - 'do as I say not as I do?'

Knowledge emerges in a collaborative process rather than being dictated by experts.

Ok. I can see problems with the idea that bloggers meet the criteria of 'the wisdom of crowds' however as I've mentioned the comments section on blogs can be a collaborative process - you don't need to be a 'blogger' to write comments, read blogs, email the blogger. Many bloggers are influenced by other bloggers - I tend to read Dizzy, ChickYog, DK, Eugenides, Dale etc every day. Things Dizzy, for example, have said have changed my outlook - and I will point people in his direction.

The alternative to blogging (i.e. the MSM) is to have journalists appointing themselves as experts - but they often aren't experts. Professor John Curtice is an expert on Scottish Politics (fuck knows, he is on the tv every night). Iain McWhirter just tells everyone he is. He is no more qualified to write about Scottish politics than I am - we are both relatively intelligent Scots who live in Scotland who take an interest in Scottish politics. Is this democratic, Oliver, and if so - how?

Monbiot springs to mind - a zoologist masquerading as a climate scientist who also has an opinion on everything...

But political bloggers are not the required type of crowd. They are, by definition, a self-selecting group of the politically motivated who have time on their hands.

Mmmm. Political bloggers are a much more diverse network (highlighting every sort of political opinion) than, oooh, I don't know, political journalists who are, on the whole, centrist, upper Middle Class, London-based Oxbridge graduates. That is far more elitist and out of touch than the blogosphere and much harder to break into. Most political bloggers cram their blogging in to busy lives... the likes of Kamm now do it full time. Many are politically aligned - many (including myself) are not. They are not self-selecting in the traditional meaning of a self-selecting elite - people opt in and nobody needs to first and second them, they just start a blog and go. And they can write what they please, if people like what they read they'll return and link to them.

Blogs are providers not of news but of comment.

Not strictly true, of course, but I get his general point. How does this differ from, say, Toynbee, Kamm or any of the other comment journalists earning a crust today?

This would be a good thing if blogs extended the range of available opinion in the public sphere.

This is nonsense. What he seems to be arguing here is that blogs are ok as long as they offer something obviously different from the content available in magazines and newspapers. Rubbish. Dizzy, for example, is a better commentator than many centre right commentators in the media. It is quality of content not diversity of content that matters, surely?

But they do not; paradoxically, they narrow it.

Absolute horse. The blogosphere has a much wider range of available opinion than the mainstream media - because it is not mainstream. There are uber-left blogs, uber-right blogs, libertarianism is much more fashionable on the blogosphere etc. Most journalism (Fisk etc aside) is remarkably similar and very centrist by comparison.

This happens because blogs typically do not add to the available stock of commentary: they are purely parasitic on the stories and opinions that traditional media provide.

Sure. Some blogs, such as this one occasionally, attack pieces written by Toynbee but we also offer a level of analysis that other media sources do not. I can spend 3 hours writing a lengthy piece about a minor news article simply because it interests me. I can add a lot more analysis than a small piece in a newspaper. He seems to dismiss that some bloggers research, check their facts and become specialists in an area.

If, say, Polly Toynbee or Nick Cohen did not exist, a significant part of the blogosphere (a grimly pretentious neologism) would have no purpose and nothing to react to.

A straw man. This misunderstands the many bloggers who attack Toynbee and Cohen. They peddle bollocks, people pull them up on this but very few blogs exist purely to attack Guardian writers. DK, for example, often writes about technological issues. I sometimes write about wine, parking inspectors, popular 'culture'... etc.

The great innovation of web-based commentary is that readers may select minutely the material they are exposed to.

Well, that's true. Although, I tend to put links in my post (and many other bloggers, such as Dale, have hundreds of possible links to a wide variety of sources - I like people reading other blogs. By definition, newspapers do not like their readers reading other papers). As it happens, how does this differ from the fact that most newspaper readers buy one newspaper...

The corollary is that they may filter out views they find uncongenial.

How many pro-war pieces have you seen in The Independent? How many times have you seen them even give a decent weight to a neo-conservative piece?

This is a problem for a healthy democracy, which depends on a forum for competing views.

The blogosphere encourages linking in posts and on blogs, it encourages comments...

But it gets worse. Politics, wrote the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, is a conversation, not an argument.

I admire Oakeshott but him saying something does not make it correct. I would argue that I am much more likely to have a conversation with one of my readers than you are with yours, Oliver, as they can email me or comment on my posts.

The intention of drawing readers into the conversation by means of a facility for adding comments results in an immense volume of abusive material directed - and recorded for posterity - at public figures.

Yes. Of course, sometimes this is true. There is nothing bad, in and of itself, of calling Reid a cunt. It's cathartic for a start (Kamm supposes that all bloggers are writing for one reason when in actual fact we blog for any number of reasons). However, Kamm sees what happens on some comment threads and suggests that is always the case - simply not true.

The blogosphere, in short, is a reliable vehicle for the coagulation of opinion and the poisoning of debate. It is a fact of civic life that is changing how politics is conducted - overwhelmingly for the worse, and with no one accountable for the decline.

If you believe this, why do you continue to run your blog? Kamm seems to think that all bloggers use their blog as a way of getting a column - this is both impossible and palpably untrue. What alternative does Kamm suggest? This is typical, as Timmy says, of someone who has made it up the ladder pulling it up after him... supposing, of course, that anyone wants to follow him.

RS