Roving reporters, brilliant bloggers

GNU BRITAIN

An interesting article in the Guardian by Emily Bell comments on the increasingly dependent relationship between MSM (mainstream media) and 'private' sources, such as the people who recorded the scenes from inside Tube carriages on their mobile phones on Thursday (she also mentions bloggers, natch).

It calls to my mind the fact that I do not blog out of pure vanity - there are plenty of fora on the internet where I can put out my personal opinion at length, and bore the pants off my fellow human. Rather, I wanted to add my own contribution to what seems to be an increasing trend in a disseminated, fragmented - but somehow stronger - form of journalism. After all, we all sift through the news to read only the things that are important to us; why not create our own newspaper which contains only the things which are important to us? Especially one which uses no paper (unless you've been printing this blog out, in which case I pity you).

What's more, just as one might find something surprisingly interesting in a part of the paper one doesn't normally read, so I have found surprisingly interesting stuff just by flicking through the blogs (the best of which are listed on the left, but there are loads more good ones out there, which I just haven't come across yet). It's like channel hopping, the difference being that there aren't 5000 channels of crap. Most blogs are relatively high quality, and some are superlative, as good as anything in the MSM (and usually with impeccable grammar and spelling, for those for whom this is important). There are a lot of first-class journalists out there, who are not actually Journalists. Even the 'personal diary' type bloggers who tell us about the intimate details of their lives are more fascinating than all the days and days of Big Bother put together.

As Bell writes: "The public have shifted up a gear, and now those in the media have to decide how they wish to keep pace." I'm proud to have joined the race. I hope I can make a difference.

(PS If anyone from Pirates is reading this, this post wasn't prompted by Annabel's comments. Not consciously, anyway.)

(PPS Anyone who doubts the quality of blogging in this country should check out Tim Worstall's BritBlog round-up.)


CASE IN POINT: A blogger was on one of those Tube trains - his account is here (via Cabalamat Journal).

UPDATE TO CASE IN POINT: It seems another blogger was on the Piccadilly Line train - she has been recounting her experiences on the BBC News website. She reveals that the Piccadilly bomb was at the back of the first carriage, not the front (as the BBC had reported).