Vancouver.
I may be at AoIR 2007 in Vancouver, but back in Australia our Club Bloggery series as part of the ABC's online Australian election coverage continues. The third instalment of Club Bloggery has now been posted on the ABC site, and we've also posted a version of the article to our Gatewatching group blog:
Beyond Gotcha: Blogs as a Space for Debate
By Jason Wilson, Axel Bruns, and Barry Saunders
The mainstream media and critics of Web 2.0's "cult of the amateur" often suggest that blogs and citizen journalism will never replace their mainstream counterparts because they "don't break stories". Notwithstanding the fundamental furphy - who ever said anything about "replacing" the MSM anyway? - there is some truth in this. It goes without saying that most bloggers don't have the resources, pulling power or proximity to the pollies to do much original political reporting: this is something that most sensible public affairs bloggers concede. (Though how often the mainstream media really break stories - as against exploiting deliberate, calculated 'leaks' from party spinsters - is a separate question.)
Still, this distance from the "insiders'" gallery is a strength as much as it is a weakness. That's because the online commentariat aren't so beholden to a cycle driven by the newsroom or the whistle-stop agendas of ministerial press offices. They often have the space to reflect on and analyse a story for some time after it has broken in the deadline-driven MSM. Newspapers often break news in terms of "gotcha" moments, then in the day or two afterward publish some punditry, print some letters and move on to the next phase in the news cycle. Especially at campaign time, there isn't much space for reflection. But bloggers are able to provoke and host discussions about the larger questions arising from such stories over subsequent days and weeks.
