Intermezzo...

Sorry, blogging has been way down on my list of priorities as my usual quarterly deadline encroaches.

But here is an article in today's FT that should be read. Unfortunately it's behind the usual barrier.


But what is relevant is that he's right: the idea that bloggers can replace the MSM as a source of news is severly mistaken.

Bloggers can, at best, be fact-checkers and opinion-writers. In other words, bloggers are, at best, editors.

But they're not the people who actually go out and write up the news.

Good point from John Gapper.

The reason that people like La Huffington think that they are a source of "news" is that for many, far too many, there is little or no distinction between news and opinion, since they think that they, the journalists, must tell people what reality is rather than "merely" to report it. The liberal media - The New York Times, Time, Newsweek - are particularly guilty of this, with scarcely a proper reporting without spin visible.

And that is where the MSM can still shine and why it still makes sense to actually read old news on dead trees. Local news is the alpha and omega of success here, whereby Gapper most properly points out that "local news" can also mean local in the sense of specialized interest groups. Me, I'd love to have such a feed on vintage watches (actually, I do: I am a co-moderator on WatchUSeek's vintage watch forum and have another blog where I occasionally write about my vintage watches and why I like them. Rather pathetic for most people, but then again, WIS are often seen that way...)

Will be back to blogging more seriously at the beginning of April...