Axel Talks Back

I participated in a show on blogging on ABC Radio National this evening - Australia Talks Back with Sandy McCutcheon. My thanks to the ABC for inviting me along; hope I managed to contribute something worthwhile. I think the show should be online on the ABC site soon.

For what it's worth, the left/right angle the show took was interesting - they set up a very equitable balance between one right-wing (Tim Blair) and one left-wing (John Quiggin) commentator, with me presumably coming in as the neutral academic (?). Possibly a result of the continuous criticism of the ABC as politically biased - wonder if this political debate between the sides is necessarily such a key aspect of blogs at this point, other than in the obvious case of key political issues like the war in Iraq. If we do follow through on this point, though, let's put in an honorable mention for Stand Down, the left-right blog on the Iraq war where such debate does in fact take place; bloggers from all sides of the political spectrum participate there. I didn't get around to mentioning this on air.

At any rate, good to see blogs starting to get such good coverage on air!