Political journalism’s future?
It was an “old-fashioned scoop – a story so important and secret that any newspaper would have leapt at the chance to run it,” said Stephen Pollard in The Times. But one of the biggest political stories of the year was broken by a blogger, and had at its heart the government’s flailing attempts to harness the power of a changing news media.
So is this first big scoop for digital journalism an indication of a sea change in political reporting, a sign of a “more direct democracy” upgraded “for the age of broadband,” as Douglas Carswell MP claims?
Guido Fawkes claims that he is effective at digging up scoops because he doesn’t heed the rules of the Lobby, which he derided on his blog today: “Journalists are to there to ‘speak truth unto power’. Not trade favours for tittle tattle, not report spin as truth.”
Guido has yet to reveal how he obtained McBride’s emails (although he has commented on Charlie Beckett’s blog that he will do in due course), so it’s hard to judge whether it was the blogger’s flexibility that allowed him to get the scoop.
But if Carswell and Charlie Beckett (who argues that blogs are more credible because they are cross referenced and collaborative) are right, we could have the seeds of a form of political journalism that is more transpaperent and effective than the old Lobby system.
Of course, it’s important to note that Guido didn’t break the story on order-order.com, but rather gave (sold?) it to the Sunday Times and News of the World. Pollard argues that it is indicitive of the resistance of newspapers that this was necessary to gain maximum impact. Guido responded:
As for giving it (for free) to the two biggest circulation Sunday papers in Britain – the Screws and the Sunday Times – well you have to understand my position. There were a lot of legal difficulties to be considered – an abiding suspicion that the story could be spiked or suppressed. I was taking on the most poisonous political operator in Britain and the Downing Street machine. We were playing for keeps.
Fair enough, but it’s tempting to see some truth in Pollard’s argument that “the real impact of a blog story happens only when it moves into the traditional media.” The question is, for how much longer will this be the case?
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And to the other main issue raised by the Red Rag debacle: Labour’s failing digital communications policy. As I discussed on this blog in January and February, Labour is a long way behind the Tories on the web, and the McBride-Draper emails show that they are going about this in completely the wrong way. Even Alastair Campbell was struck by their “incompetence”.
LabourList, Draper’s online project, was meant to bring the grassroots activism together on the web. It doesn’t seem to have been very successful, and I would venture that this is because it was organised out of Downing Street.
The most successful political bloggers, Tim Montgomerie, Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes, are right wing (and the first two have strong Tory ties) but they aren’t in CCHQ’s pocket. This independence gives them credibility (and a lot more hits) than LabourList or Bloggers4Labour will ever have.
One Labour blogger who has been succesful has been Tom Harris. Yes, he is an MP, but he manages to assert an independence on his blog that doesn’t exist on any of the centrally organised sites. The other Labour MP with a major online presence is Tom Watson, but his is a much more stuffy, (and I would guess) much less read blog. The fact that he is a Minister and is director of Gordon Brown’s online strategy, rather than commenting from the backbenches like Harris, to my mind explains this.
(Tellingly, while Harris commented on the McBride issue early on, Watson’s blog and Twitter feeds have been silent since the story broke).
The Red Rag idea was a disaster waiting to happen. Spreading gossip from Downing Street was never going to work. The web is a very transparent place, and to succesfully digitally campaign independence and credibility are required. I don’t think they’ll manage this until they are back in opposition.
Filed under: new media, pol communication, the future of media
Does Pollard’s view not merely provide an update to a role traditional media have had all along – that of selecting the “best” stories from a wide variety of sources, and running with them? I can’t quite see how blog-published stories would ever have the same impact as those published in papers, since people rely on papers to screen everything that’s out there and present to them only what’s interesting (to them – which is why we have different papers leaning in different directions).
Sure, people can subscribe to RSS feeds, but I suspect what a lot of people would really like, and this is where traditional media currently fit in, is an intelligent aggregator of stories of interest, not just from those feeds they’re directly subscribed to, but from across the globe, both real and virtual. Which, incidentally, gives journalists a new/different/alternative role – running their own blogs, finding and publishing stories they think they can sell to the papers. If they’re good, but they don’t sell, if you’ve got AdWords etc. set up, and you get some traffic spikes from Digg and delicious, then you’re still making money off the stories. OK, not as secure as a staff position, but an avenue nonetheless.
Re: the redesign, looks good, but I’m unsure about the font and border colour of the quote and reply boxes (RGB 203/185/69) combined with the pink (RGB 255/250/219) background. The green in particular just seems a little yucky, for want of a better descriptor.
“So is this first big scoop for digital journalism an indication of a sea change in political reporting”
I thought Guido bagged Peter Hain a couple of years back!?
I think you’re right Colin. Jeff Jarvis’s “do what you do best, link to the rest” maxim is probably going to become the case more and more. The real question, however, is how far the free-wheeling style of bloggers like Guido Fawkes is going to affect political journalism. Can the Lobby system be broken down? Can we have a more transparent journalism?
As for the redesign, you credit me with too much design expertise. A simple template I’m afraid, so I can’t tweak the colours that much. I might go back to the other design in a few days.