So Kate Adie doesn't like blogs, eh? I guess that's her out of a job. How dare she? When every other journalist and his dog (and the publishing industry consultant hired by the dog) says we should be engaging in a conversation* with the audience. Where every user* is a potential expert and where the citizen journalist** reigns supreme, how dare a lowly war correspondent suggest that this headlong drive into online ego-masturbation is not a vital move to engage our dwindling readership/viewership/listenership.
As Ms Adie told Michael Mullane on multimediameetsradio:
"You are blogging to a peer group - that's all right - I can understand there is a demand for that. But journalists shouldn't have any time to blog - there are too many stories waiting to be told!”
To those who are already circling the bandwagons, just answer this question:
When was the last time you heard a reader, a reporter, a copy editor or an advertiser say 'Yeah this war coverage stuff is fine, but, you know, what we really need is a blog'?
To Ms Adie, I say bravo. But she should probably be prepared for comments along the lines of 'Yeah, Iranian Embassy, Tiananmen Square, yeah, Beirut, the Gulf ... whatever. You just don't get it Kate, you just don't get it'.
For future reference a * indicates vomit, and a ** indicates vomit interspersed with swearing
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Blogs can be war coverage too - just look at Kevin Sites. Kate seems to assume that 'blogging' is automatically ego-massage, when 'blogging' is just a platform, which can be used in a variety of ways (and of course, some people don't use it effectively).
I'm sure many newspaper reporters sneered at television when it first came out, saying: "journalists shouldn't have time to set up all that gear just for a five minute report, when there are too many stories to be told!" Kate could tell us so much more in a blog about the stories that TV doesn't have time for. She could show those reporters just how much they are wasting their time, and what they should be doing with their blogs.
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