Blogging and the Net

Speaking at a symposium in Melbourne on 'Media and Government: A Changing Relationship in Uncertain Times', John Lloyd of The Financial Times said the "great blogging phenomenon" had given "real and substantial meaning to the aspiration for, and the commitment to, freedom of speech". From Australian IT News:

Lloyd is contributing editor of the Financial Times, founding editor of FT magazine and author of What the Media are Doing to Our Politics and Media Power: Telling Truths to Ourselves. "This (blogging) is an extraordinary publishing phenomenon," he said. He said every generation was becoming increasingly active in blogging. According to the website Technorati, two new blogs are created every second. Their number is doubling every six months and stands at 50 million, of which about one-third to one-half are in English. "Maybe few will pay attention to most of these 50 million, but freedom of speech never did carry with it the right to have an audience supplied," he said.

Lloyd said blogs had allowed uncompromising views to flourish and usually sought to attract "like hearts and minds" through a strong expression of a point of view rather than "judicious weighing of argument". "Much blogging is little removed from abuse," he said. "It has encouraged, though presumably not created, an increasing polarisation in (US) politics, sometimes a puzzle to outsiders."

As with Dionne, Lloyd sees the proliferation of the 'bloggerati' as an opportunity. "The internet and the blogosphere may be the greatest boost to activism of any communications medium since the spread of literacy met the invention of printing," he said. "I think this aspect of the net and blogs is understressed. But what has been oversold ... is that they are shouldering ... the mainstream media to the side. They are not doing anything like the job good reporting does. And while there is no reason in principle why the net should not be the medium for this - and it is becoming so (with established media organisations) - it has not yet evolved a business model to support the expense of extensive reporting."

Lloyd said a senior BBC executive had told him recently that by 2010, the BBC will have shifted from being "largely a broadcasting organisation to largely a website". "The same will be true all over the world, at different, but not too different, speeds," he said. "Newspapers are already partly websites."

Articles by John Lloyd for Prospect magazine