Stilgherrian

[This article was first published in Crikey yesterday. As I write this, the affected MobileMe customers are still without email.]

As the hype surrounding the god-like iPhone slowly, oh so slowly fades, a problem emerges from the shadows…

Apple’s subscription email service .Mac was rebranded MobileMe to coincide with the iPhone 3G launch. Existing customers have been moved to the new platform, but for some (Apple claims 1%) it’s a disaster. They’ve been unable to use email for five days — not from their Macs, not from their iPhones, not via the web. And that’s not the only problem. As .Mac user Ed Dale said, “Not pleasant to log in and see four years of mail gone.”

Crikey’s First Dog on the Moon, also a MobileMe-er, says “it’s been crap”.

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It’s a lame excuse to link to Bill Wyman’s old song, but I am actually very happy to have been translated into French and quoted in Le Monde.

In his column Transnets, Francis Pisani’s article Blogalaxie/4: “futur des médias” et “rumeurs” quotes my rant about journalism from last week.

Ils ont parlé de la “tension artificielle” blogueurs-journalistes qui, selon Stephen Collins occupe trop de place (voir ce qu’en ont écrit Narvic et Éliane Fiolet sur Transnets).

J’ai bien aimé cette phrase du blogueur australien Stilgherrian: “Ce qui est fatiguant dans cette fausse dichotomie c’est qu’elle compare les idéaux les plus élevés du journalisme et le degré le plus bas du blogging personnel.”

Et ce petit avis aux journalistes traditionnels: “La forme de votre métier et la forme de vos articles était déterminée par la technologie pour les distribuer.” Aujourd’hui “nous avons tous des claviers, nous avons tous des téléphones mobiles avec des caméras ou nous les aurons bientôt. Nous avons tous des outils de publication et de distribution” comme WordPress ou YouTube entre autres.

I sound much more intelligent in French… and I do like the word “blogalaxie” rather than “blogosphere”. Still, I reckon “blogueur” and “blogueuse” sound more like something you’d pump out of an asthmatic duck.

I’m not a big fan of the term “citizen journalism”. As I’ve said, adopting the label “journalist” will inevitably annoy those who think they are the “real journalists”. And we’re all citizens anyway, even curmudgeonly journalists.

But I haven’t though of anything better. Neither has anyone else yet, so we’re stuck with it. We might as well agree on what it means.

As usual, Wikipedia provides some good background. But Jay Rosen recently repeated his Most Useful Definition of Citizen Journalism:

It’s mine, but it should be yours. Can we take the quote marks off now? Can we remove the “so-called” from in front?

When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism.

There are other definitions, but they will have to be discussed in the comments.

I used quote-marks in my headline and first paragraph because I believe that’s how you denote the item of language you’re discussing. But from now on, I’ll use the term “citizen journalism” without quotes — except just then, because I was denoting again.

Does this definition work for you? Got a better name for it?

Since skeptical asked in the comments, where are the good Australian political blogs?

During Australia’s federal election in 2007, for me Possum’s Pollytics was invaluable for its analysis of opinion polls, as was Peter Brent’s Mumble. Larvatus Prodeo provided interesting commentary from a centre-left perspective. I didn’t get into any of the right-wing commentators, because Howard’s End became inevitable they became more shrill, less rational.

However the election overloaded me. I prefer to read essays and analysis with a longer timeframe, not the daily news focus on political mud-throwing.

What, for you, are the best Australian political blogs, and why?

Given the recent rants about journalism and journalistic standards [mine and Jonathan Este's], Anna Warwick’s current blog entry at news.com.au is particularly apropos.

In her post Lost my designer sunnies, Ms Warwick (pictured) relates how she acted when she had to pay $14 for a glass of wine at an up-market city bar.

“I’m a journalist, I can’t afford this!” I said, hoping they might become afraid of bad publicity and offer me a freebie. Obviously I wasn’t at all scary. Joe ushered me out as soon as we’d finished our round.

As commenter Nikky of Sydney pointed out:

And they wonder why journalists in traditional media think blogging isn’t journalism… Saying that you’re a “journalist” and hoping to get a freebie at a bar is just disgraceful. Check the code of ethics, Anna. If you can’t afford a $14 glass of wine, then you might need to drink where all the other journos drink on their own dime, or invite yourself shamelessly along to a publicity event, instead of trying to pressure poor bar staff into giving you free hospitality.

Now there are only two alternatives here. Either Ms Warwick is a journalist — and her butterfly-infested personal website mentions roles such as “managing editor” — so using that status to scam a freebie is unethical. Or she’s not a journalist, which means she was lying.

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Stilgherrian’s links for 17 July 2008 through 18 July 2008, gathered according to the ancient rituals:

• Who is watching YouTube? The US courts want to know | ABC News: Are IP addresses personal information? Peter Black's take on the recent YouTube vs Viacom decision. With a lengthy comment by yours truly.
• stripe - what you want on radio: A new multi-channel "Internet radio" service due to go live on 29 July. Subscription model, based in Australia. Investors include Glenn Wheatley and Alan Jones.
• "Is St Isidore of Seville really the Patron Saint of the Internet?": Short answer: Yes.

I’m well pleased that my rant for Crikey about journalists elicited a witty response from Jonathan Este, the journos’ “union thug”. He’s kindly allowed me to republish it in full below. My comments afterwards.

He’d also like me to draw your attention to the MEAA’s own project, The Future of Journalism, done in conjunction with The Walkley Foundation.

Bloggers: the biggest whingers since journalists

Jonathan Este writes:

Your blogging correspondent, Stilgherrian, seemed like such a nice bloke at the Future of Media Summit in Sydney on Tuesday. On the way from the venue to the pub afterwards we shared a few yarns and war stories and I bought him a beer.

He could have been a real journalist.

But his piece in yesterday’s Crikey [local copy] betrayed his outsider status in his very first par:

What is the future of journalism? To judge by the discussion at this week’s Future of Media Summit… it’s endless bl–dy whingeing.

Whingeing, old son, is the past, the present and the future of journalism, as you’d know if you’d spent much time in the newsroom. It’s what we do. Journalists love whingeing and we’re pretty damn good at it.

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I’m fascinated by the rich variety of the human sexual experience — and by the widespread denial about same.

For all that Cardinal Pell, bless his little silk knickers, thinks that sex only happens between (one) man and (one) woman who are married, have the lights turned off, and are not enjoying the experience but are breeding to better the Catholic Church, actual experience proves the complete opposite. Humans have and enjoy sex in pretty much every combination that can be imagined.

I was therefore fascinated with a massive spam comment which I’ve just deleted, which purported to list “What people search for” on the porn sites it was promoting.

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Stilgherrian’s links for 13 July 2008 through 17 July 2008, gathered with moss like a rolling stone doesn’t:

• Flat Earth News: The official website for Nick Davies' book, which various people have suggested I read.
• Straw man | Wikipedia: "A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position." Tagged as a reminder to certain blog commenters.
• Zappos.com: Who'd have thought that people would buy shoes online? Who'd have thought that a company would use Twitter and other social media to do great customer service (or so I'm told)?
• Journalism: A Toxic Culture? (Or: Why Aren’t We Having More Fun?) | contentious.com: Amy Gahran helps explain why journalists are so defensive about their craft these days, and posits that they have "Priesthood Syndrome".
• The plastic buttons we push | Amit Gupta likes you!: How do you make a living? Is it by pushing plastic buttons all day?
• Is Social Media The Ultimate Buzz Kill? | Awake At The Wheel: Are we becoming so addicted to telling people about what we're experencing that we actually forget to experience it?
• Principia Discordia Hardback | Synaptyclypse Generator: The central Discordian text, "Principia Discordia", is once more available in hardback. I am well pleased.
• DIY carbon change | Unleashed: "Sometime in the last two weeks I stopped believing in government," says Mark Pesce. If governments are failing to respond to this vital issue, then we can ignore them and handle this ourselves.

[I promised Crikey that I'd write something about the Future of Media Summit 2008. This rant is what emerged. You can also read it over at Crikey, where there's a different stream of comments.]

What is the future of journalism? To judge by the discussion at this week’s Future of Media Summit held simultaneously in Sydney and Silicon Valley (and every other “new media” conference I’ve been to lately) it’s endless bloody whinging. Whinging about how journalism has standards and bloggers are all “just” writing whatever they think.

The panels in both cities covered the same, tired old ground. The new “participatory media” and “citizen journalism” would never be Real Journalism, because Real Journalism is an Art/Craft/Profession. Real Journalism involves research and fact-checking and sub-editing. There’s a Code of Ethics. But “these people”, as bloggers get labelled, these people just sit around in their pyjamas and write whatever comes into their heads.

Bollocks.

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Summize, the Twitter search engine, has just been bought by Twitter and rebranded search.twitter.com. Read all about it.