Effective blogging (part 2): local left blogs for local left people
Entering the New Year, there was a mini-flood of blog posts about where centre-left leftwing blogging is going. Some of it was of little value, as it sees the blogosphere in terms than that initially ironic nomenclature suggests: a self-enclosed world where the height of attainment is a large readership and a large number of links back from other blogs with large readerships.
While Left Foot Forward (LFF) at least tried to make the link between blogging and the electoral fate of the Labour party, it seemed a little over-optimistic about the effects its meticulous and well-researched attacks on the Tories. Perversely, it fell to Guido Fawkes to point this out:
LFF is, and most of the right-wing blogosphere gives you credit for this, the best new offering from the left. But what do you think you will achieve electorally? My estimate is slightly more than zero.
Electoral achievement, in the context of the general election, was the subject of my preceding article on left blogging. In essence, the view I expressed in that is that in such a short time span there can only ever be a marginal effect, notwithstanding some of the short-term success that Will Straw quite understandably refers to in his comments. To a great extent I agree with Luke Akehurst:
Blogs, tweets and Facebook are actually more likely to be what loses a party the election than what wins it. Because as the Damian McBride affair showed, one ill-considered email or tweet or blogpost or Facebook status upset by a candidate or campaigner can provide a lot of ammo for the old-fashioned media to shred a party’s campaign with.
The link between blogging and more general activism, though, is a quite different matter.
My view is that there is huge and untapped potential for a casual link between internet and real world political activism on the left. The challenge is to work out what that causal link might be, and ensure that it works. I don’t think that’s been well enough done just yet, and this is what the rest of this post is about.
Even a decent analysis like that of Phil at AVPS drifts towards the easy assumption that building the left blogopshere will somehow, almost magically, translate into widened political activism, even though it is perfectly clear that current blog readers makes up a tiny, tiny percentage of the number of actual or possible activists, and even multiplying that readership tenfold is not going to make the percentage anything other than still very small.
It was good to see, then, our very own Dave Semple give proper attention given to how, if at all, blogging can positively influence socialist activism.
Dave first sets out his belief that “on the internet there exists, in one form or another, everything that could make blogging relevant for the Left”, before going on to assess the extent of the gap between what is still largely national politics-focused blogging and local action. He hits the nail firmly on the head when he says:
Framing the debate and setting the narrative are good aims, but activism must take place once we’ve established that narrative, or it will be for nothing. This needs to be done on a local level, because it’s of no use me knowing what’s going on in Liverpool or Edinburgh and wanting to help out if I can’t afford to travel the distance to be active on the ground.
In my view, this is a much more important step for leftwing blogging than anything to do with what is now being term ‘link love’ between existing bloggers.
The right control both local and national institutions, not least through the massive policy centralisation of almost all that is local, so they don’t need to develop locally independent action; their blogging job is simply to support the institutional structures already in place; for the left, the ONLY realistic way to create socialist momentum is via grassroots activism, independent but increasingly co-ordinated towards common targets through a process of incremental democratic centralism, designed to support rather than stymie local action.
All that sounds lovely, of course. But if it was all so straightforward, it’d be happening a bit more than it is now. Dave is right to point out nascent attempts at local activist blogging, such as took place around Visteon or Vesta, and likewise Phil’s ‘discovery’ of a local blog linked to activism in Newcastle, ‘Grey Matters’ is enough to encourage us that people recognise the potential of blogging as a means to stir up leftwing activity, but it doesn’t mean it will work.
As Phil says, the jury is out on the Newcastle blog, which hasn’t posted recently, and which in places looks like a nationally focused blog with local contributors (rather as my own Bickerstaffe Record was somewhat vaingloriously becoming little by little till I sought to bring a halt to the drift by moving to TCF with my wider burblings).
But in general, local leftist blogs linked to activism are not being developed. Any local stuff that there is out there is largely pretty sterile stuff, dedicated either to reflecting the worthiness of a local councillor or MP or to towing a party line, and is not there to encourage action; indeed, it can be argued that the ‘if there’s a problem contact me because I’m great’ approach, while understandable, actually militates against local activism except in terms of dragging out supporters at election time.
So if local left blog activity is not happening in the way many of us like it to, it behoves to ask why, and what can be done about it.
In my view, there is one big barrier to progress on good activist-focused blogging, and again Dave hits the nail on the head:
It may seem contradictory, but the more local one tries to focus, the more resource- and personnel-intensive the endeavour will be…… Obviously a knotty problem. Some of the measures outlined above require skills that are not in abundance to be provided by all activists, such as coding, and are expensive….. I do not think efforts like the above can be made in isolation, except under the exceptional circumstances of people with a great deal of time (and money) on their hands, or the sheer will to engage – like Kate Belgrave does with her pieces on Skelmersdale and other topics.
I agree entirely, and I agree entirely with Dave’s closing words to that post ‘More thought necessary’. That’s the reason for this post.
What is needed to get local activism-focused left blogging going properly can be summed up under the following sub-headings:
1 Costs, funding and content
We need a clear and ‘here is what we do on day one’ plan to get the right number of the right kind of people with the right kind of people on the right kind of living wage, working from pilot phase towards an ambitious but manageable target of national coverage.
My initial workings suggest that a local blog covering a population of 30-40,000 people might be able to survive on turnover of around £80,000 per year inclusive of a living wage for two staff and operational costs, but exclusive of delivery costs (see below) which will need to remain volunteer based in the short term. (As a comparator, this article suggests that Left Foot Forard is operating on a budget of about £100,000 per year.)
Initially, although I agree that in the longer term these costs should as far as possible be covered by worker organisations like trade unions (and thereafter a Labour party more open to wider left engagement), the reality is that funds may need to be raised friom charitable/employment creation sources (see, for example, this kind of opportunity coming along in Wales), and from very local advertising.
At the heart of all of this is the idea that a local left blog needs to attract a wide enough readership to make it sustainable, and underpinning this will need to be a coherent strategy for making leftwing approaches to news accessible and ‘newsworthy’ while retaining the overall commitment to an identifiable leftwing cause. It will be all to easy to slip into an easy but ultimately self-defeating populism in order to attract readership (I know, I’ve done it), and a reflexive editorial hand and, perhaps even more important, an openness to critique and comment of the type to which blogs like Though Cowards Flinch aspires.
2 Legal form
We need a discussion and agreement on the best legal form for local blog set-ups and for an accompanying national network; the legal status should allow both maximum opportunity for fundraising while at the same time guarding ensuring worker control of the overall direction (an Industrial Provident Society is possibly the best form, but may incur larger set-up legal costs than an ‘off the shelf’ Community Interest Company)
3 Blog targeting
A clear, replicable methodology for the development of local blogs of the appropriate size and reach is essential, but with the right level of flexiblity built in to suit local circumstances (e.g. blogs in small towns with two or three major employers will have a different approach to ones in ‘dormitory’ suburbs on the edge of cities.
4 Beyond the blog medium
There needs to be a commitment to move beyond the web-based confines of the blog and expand into suitably adapted, regularly distributed hard copy versions of blogs for specific ‘awareness raising’ periods of time at the end of which might follow a blog ‘opt in’ campaign in order to maintain the direction and energy.
There also needs to be a commitment to getting blog-generated information and propaganda into areas which are or have become depoliticised; that is, there should be a move beyond house-to-house coverage, with the inevitable coverage dominance of local ‘community’ issues and towards workplaces and other environments in which class relations and rightwing hegemonies can be highlighted (e.g. benefits offices). This, naturally, may mean some confrontation with authority.
To an extent, such a move should look to reverse decisions made by political parties made in the 1970s/80s to focus their literature and campaign efforts on the household rather than the work unit (e.g. the SWP changed its branch structure from workplace to geographic in the early 1980s), while still recognising the changes in the way the economy runs in the early 21st century.
5 Integration with other media
We need a method for blog development which takes into account the different strengths of existing local and regional media across the country so that impact is maximised. For example, in Liverpool, where the Echo retains a per capita readership and ‘opinion dominance’ far above many other cities of the same size or bigger (cf. the fading Manchester Evening News), there will be a case for influencing and feeding that paper, whereas in other places blogs should simply seek to fill a political comment vacuum.
Secondly, once the initial pilot blogs are set up, there needs to be an engagement with the NUJ about union membership for these paid bloggers, so that they can benefit from the solidarity, support, and access to training available to members.
Finally, there needs to be at least some thought about how this collection of new local left blogs might relate to existing leftwing publishing ventures e.g, Red Pepper, not just in terms of cross fertilisation of writings so that journalistic skills and grassroots experienced are exchanged, but also in terms of possibilities for joint financing for expansion of depth and reach through additional paid staff.
In many ways, what I set out above is the bones of a social business plan, and if I were to sit down for a day with these notes I’d have a fully costed, well-laid out plan which would form the basis of initial applications for start-up costs. The only slight drawback is that no-one would read it.
What’s needed as a step prior to this is for a group of blogger activists and sympathetic journalists to come together, in much as the same way as the failed (but useful in terms of learning) attempt in late 2008/2009 to set up LeftNewMedia, but with a specific aim of agreeing the basic of a business plan, identifying areas for initial pilot work, and getting on with the fundraising work to make it happen within a realistic timescale.
All of this is possible. I’ve set up and battered into initial shape more social enterprise ideas now than I’m comfortable remembering (I’m a great kick-starter – just don’t ask me to complete and finish stuff), and I know there’s a model which will work in here, though I also know it won’t come without big methodological, financial and most of all political challenges when circulation needs dictate one line, but political integrity demands another.
You want to join in? If so, I’m happy to meet up (in London if need be) at a weekend towards the end of February. I’ll need a room, some flipcharts and a bumch of committed activists willing to do what they agree to try and do according to a timetable they’ve agreed to. I’ll take it from there.
Yes, of course it’s ambitious. Of course I’m going out on a limb. Of course it may come to nothing again. But it might not. Sign up in the comments box below. Or argue.
Thanks for a very thought-provoking and detailed piece. You’re largely thinking along the same lines as me, and I’m sure there are others who will be very sympathetic. Crucially, I think you are correct in the ambitious aims and priorities you outline. On a practical point please do keep me informed about any developments with this. We definitely need to push this forward.
Just a quick note on local activism specifically and blogging: when I started last March I intended to have a sharp focus on the North East, but moved away from this when I realised most of my (modest) audience wasn’t local. That is, at least in my case, the reason for abandoning any real aspirations to a local orientation (although I still often plug – or report on – Tyneside protests, meetings etc).
It’s important that, even though we realise we can’t sustain an entire blog just on local information, we continue all the same to report what we can. If only this type of thing could be gathered together in one place, we’d be absolved of the conundrum of choosing between a wider audience and the pressing need to cover matters on a local basis, from the ground up.
The outline you give for what needs to be done contains within it the very reasons why the left-blogosphere sits in the dust of the right.
Eighty grand? Eighty THOUSAND Pounds???? Are you having a laugh. Are you serious??
Hang on, no, you are aren’t you???
Must be a socialist – their speciality is wasting money and committees.
To those who have no doubt arrived here from Anna’s place, let me say this. The idea of gathering and deploying funds in order to make the internet a more effective space for the dissemination of real information – rather than the gossip the mainstream right, the mainstays of the blogosphere, specialize in, is hardly new or contentious.
Indeed it would be little different, in many respects, than the TUs maintaining their own print newspaper, except the opportunities for participation would be increased.
Paul, having re-read the article a couple of times, I think there are a few prerequisites we could get on with before we worry about a proper business model and plan etc. The skill sets, which I identify and you quote, that we need, for example, can probably be obtained and cultivated without any funds – at the very least, the knowledge about how to investigate local government, where to keep an eye out for detailed information that’s not smoothed over with PR – and how to know what we’re looking at even when it is.
Similarly, with such training, credentialling, to allow bloggers to be treated as equals to personnel from the print media. Both of these the NUJ can help with – and the reason (to address our guests for a moment) it requires a ‘committee’ is because what we’re talking about here is democratising journalism, not merely writing op-ed pieces off whatever the national media is prepared to dish out. Which is what most blogs – left or right – survive on.
In the future this means access to funds, and accountable ways of spending them.
But that’s for the future. In the meantime, I think there’s a fair amount to be said for a) organising what we’ve got and b) getting who we’ve got online, to deepen the links between activism and blogging.
That the libertarian blogosphere seems inclined to treat this superficially surprises me not at all.
Dave, I’m sorry to say it, however your comment above shows that you clearly do not “get” Web 2.0 and the blogosphere. You’re in a print media mindset for something whose fundamental nature is to be anarchic and fast moving.
This part of your comment struck me in particular:
“The idea of gathering and deploying funds in order to make the internet a more effective space for the dissemination of real information”
You can’t “make” the internet anything. The internet just is. What matters is whether you get eyeballs (and hopefully – interactions), though the latter won’t happen without the former, on your site. In particular you want lots of fresh hits and not just a few stout regulars if your mission is primarily about communication. Without this, you’re talking about what will likely be an expensive (in terms of your irreplacable life energy (time) as well as financially) and pointless failure.
What absolute nonsense.
The internet isn’t anarchic. If you can’t identify the structure and rules of the internet, that’s your problem but they do exist. In fact a lot of people make a great deal of money out of them.
The nature of the internet can be fast moving, but that doesn’t mean there is no co-ordination. In fact, those areas of the internet which get most credence are in fact well co-ordinated, whether by one person’s contacts or by maintaining multiple writers at strategic points to gather in news, write it up and influence the rest of the media.
Boiled down, if the Internet *just is*, then there’s nothing I can do to change whether or not my site will be successful or not (though you should be aware, the success of this site is not what Paul is addressing, nor I). If the internet has identifiable rules, these rules have evolved – and if they exist, then I can either a) cooperate with them and thereby gain success or b) I can try and change them.
Well, £80,000 should get you someone who can write – got anyone in mind?
Interesting post. I’m also inclined to believe that the thrust of your proposal doesn’t get Web 2.0 – then again, you may not wish to get it even where others think you should. But that, of course, is your prerogative!
The funding you’re talking about could be used to make financially viable existing national/local sites like Labour Matters (factoring into the existing mix promotion and marketing) – or indeed help set up a parallel infrastructure which would provide a framework for very many local initiatives to jointly own their means of production (a kind of copy of Labour Matters with a different ideological bent, if you like – what I was originally wanting to do with the Zebra Red news reader proposal I toyed with a few months ago).
Meanwhile, I’m currently helping support a new blogging initiative for far far less than you suggest – because, I would humbly suggest, it *does* get Web 2.0, its drivers and its economics. Rather than playing with the failing economics of print publishing, I really do think the magic of something-for-nothing crowdsourcing needs to be more seriously investigated here, though the argument that local endeavour becomes more rather than less costly is provocative. I do however feel that spending the sums of money you’re suggesting on new content when there’s already so much useful stuff out there which doesn’t currently reach its audience is choosing to pay for yet another writer when what you really need to pay for – in what can be a highly radical and perfectly socialist world of Web 2.0 if properly interpreted – is not only (as you recognise) a decent editor but also a decent server and technical infrastructure. And what’s more, coding which doesn’t simply copy what’s already out there but actually recasts and repackages so we get entirely new approaches.
If, as Dave suggests, we should try and change the rules, we need to both own *and* reshape the means of production. And that means that here, from the start, software developers with socialist imaginations need to get a look-in. Perhaps not so easy to find …
Actually Mil, the idea above (rejigged just a smidge) would entirely support the sort of endeavour you suggest. As you well know, Paul and I are all about the local, and as the quote of mine, which Paul uses, suggests, ‘local’ news and politics requires a local collective of activists. There’s nothing above which precludes the concept of owning their own means of production as you say – it’s just not explicitly mentioned in those terms.
[Edit 21.26, s'cuse me] I would point out, however, that your objection that Paul doesn’t get Web 2.0 is fundamentally opposed to the objection of the libertarians above that we don’t get Web 2.0 – your argument is actually much more akin to mine. That we must identify the structures of the internet in order to democratise the production and dissemination processes. I don’t see, therefore, how you can accuse us of not getting Web 2.0.
My understanding of Web 2.0 is that essentially it involves setting up conceptual and technological frameworks and portals which provoke or harvest crowdsourcing responses in vast numbers of people. Most organisations then choose to work out how to make money out of these instincts without dismantling the desire people have acquired to continue working for “free” (witness Twitter’s recent deals with Google and Microsoft) – socialism could probably choose to make use of such instincts in the same way or in different ways: in order to raise funds for more traditional campaigning activities or in order to develop the technologies to generate self-sustaining content with an ideological bent and algorithmic dissemination. I think it’s the latter choice which is what I would call true Web 2.0, though – and probably where I’d like socialism to go.
And I don’t think that in the above post Paul gets Web 2.0 because he’s not really seeming to understand the importance of the self-sustaining bit. He’d rather pay upfront for new content than edit the web and create new software code and constitutions which would usefully harvest excellent existing content.
Ah but the point is the existing content is not sufficient. And while there are moves we can take to improve it, which don’t require the sort of centralizing measures mentioned, here we can establish that we’re talking about two different things: the nature of the content, and how the content is organised, run and radically decentered.
Existing content *is* sufficient – it’s just not visible nor gathered together enough in one place, nor as a rule receives the feedback it needs to become relevant and organic. Appropriately structured dissemination changes how existing content is received, commented on and echoed. Distribution – in an environment as fluid as today’s Internet – actually affects existing discourse; amends and modifies it, changes its nature. The two – nature and organisation – are actually one: actually inseparable. They influence each other to the point where borderlines become very difficult to appreciate. TCF has become what it has become because of the starting points (the posts) *and* the feedback (the comments). It’s now difficult to see where most value is added.
We *must* focus on sifting and harvesting – that is to say, discovering and uncovering – existing content. Mainly because it’s already there. Mainly because, analogously, when you write a new constitution, and in the 21st century software is where constitutions are written, it’s to coordinate the existing efforts of existing people. You wouldn’t look to build on bespoke creatures to create your new worlds, now would you?
I don’t know what bespoke creatures are Mil, you’ll have to elaborate.
I do know that existing content isn’t sufficient, and if you think it is then we’re obviously talking about completely different areas of the state and society from which to gather information. To be perfectly honest with you, I can’t imagine that you are prepared to straight-facedly maintain that current production of content is sufficient, or uses sufficient production values, or has access to the relevant information necessary to inform content.
If a community meeting happens in Canterbury and I don’t know about it, content isn’t sufficient. If a council gets away with burying in its budget a measure disguised in buzzwords that will ultimately hurt working people, content isn’t sufficient.
We live in an era of an unprecedented decline of the print and broadcast media, and the internet isn’t picking up the slack. Specialist areas go unreported, because the skill sets don’t exist, yet the information can be crucial for political activism. And thus political activists become detached from events going on around them, which they don’t know are going on around them, but which have bearing on what we think and what we should do.
If you added together every single left blog or other online endeavour, there’d still be a vast amoung of information that escapes our notice, just as there are vast tracts of the country with no recognisable socialist presence. So to glibly maintain that content is sufficient is almost delusional in its complacency.
I won’t deny that widening distribution of information, or changing the nature of distribution will affect content – but it will affect what content there currently is, not what content there isn’t. And the latter is largely what Paul and I struggle with.
It doesn’t only affect existing content, it affects how that existing content develops – and will, eventually, lead to a change in that content. You either create your own or you create the tools to harvest, modify and channel in the way you would prefer (whatever your political persuasion – the opportunities are similar for everyone) all that other existing stuff which you don’t think is out there but which I think, with some kickstarting from a crowdsourcing perspective, could be given the support it needs to become more relevant. The change you get will depend on what you code, of course – how you constitutionalise your website, what you allow and don’t allow people to do. There are for example notable blogs which don’t allow comments. They develop in most singular ways – but they develop nevertheless. There are other websites, like your own, which are developing in a highly socialising manner because their site constitution not only allows visible and registrable participation but also encourages it.
I do also feel that distribution doesn’t only affect existing content in its visibility, which I’m pretty sure you don’t think either. How you set up your distribution soon enough is going to affect the form of that content (perhaps not in your case but in most cases, anyhow) and through its channelling to one audience or another inevitably moulds anew its shape and focus in accordance with the audience it is allowed to get. Which is one reason why I’ve never been clear of the value of setting up separate one-size-fits-all sites such as Labour Home or Labour List. Allowing people to come together from their very own places seems far more Web 2.0 socialist to me than creating mega-emporiums of visual and conceptual sameness so that *only* words mark the difference. We’re missing out on so much of the variety and communicative ability the Internet offers by slotting different voices into common pigeonholes of software.
Where we disagree then is that you feel the content must come before the distribution horse and I believe if you get the distribution technologically right, the content will then generate itself. Perhaps the reality is somewhere between these two postures?
Is that £80,000 still on offer? Go on, you must be able to get someone who can string a few words together.
Alex @1: Yes had the same problem with my own local blog. It got a wide national readerhip quicker than it developed a local one (though it has beee picked up by the local media quite well) and the writing got pulled away by that (and by a touch of hubris). The challenge is in making local blogs locally read, and that means integrating it with other media/actions.
Bobby Boy @3: Ever run a small business? Any idea what this post is about? (Actually there is a typo, but it’s not around the cost, it’s around the coverage, which should read 30-40,000 households, not people.)
Kasabian @3, 5, 6: Dave’s covered some of what I’d say. This post is not really about blogging when it comes down to it (and to that extent I accept the title’s a bit misleading). It’s about how activism and all the media uses that are locally useful can be intgrated and taken control of. I’m not interested in comparing right and wing blogoshpheres, because neither of them in themselves make any substantive difference. That’s why I talk about moving beyond blogging.
Mil @10 et al.: While it seems a discourteous response, Mil, I can’t get too far beyond what Dave has said about content patently being insufficient at the moment. I do get what you mean about what is to be gained from self-sustaining feedback on the web, or at least I think I do (and I agree with your analysis of how TCF is developing), but I don’t think this really gets us past the fact that there is an initial lack of content to feedback on. The reason my hard copy of the Bickerstaffe Record, which I still distribute by hand, is that it gives something totally different to people around here, and while it’s definitely evolved in response to feedback, it still happens not because of the feedback but because I write it. The actual writing of stuff, in a form people understand, and in a way which challenges right wing norms, still doesn’t do itself. That process may evolve, but that’s not Web 2.0, that’s the algorithms of web 51.0 or some such.
Dave @ 2 et al: I thnk it is possible to fill a blog with local info/analysis, but that it takes more journalistic skill and resource than nationaly -focused blogging because the source information is more difficult to extract and ‘translate’. Thats the time and resource challenge, and why we need to get serious about costs and how to cover them through the development of media/activism to economic scales thjat can make that work.
I’d like to think that some of the things you set out can happen without financing, but I simply wonder why, if that’s the case, it’s not already started to happen. It’s not difficult conceptually; it’s difficult practically. I’d be happy to be proven wrong. I think on reflection the term ‘business plan’ is wrong, as it reflects the idea of a finance sales pitch. Though that will be needed, the first pre-finance step is really about a ‘prospectus’ which encourages involvmement from journalists (and NUJ) and others as well as the odd blogger.
The other key point you raise in your comments to Mil is the lack of presence in many areas of the country. What we need to di so offer a model that can be replicated (while not cramping independence and creativity) which makes peopel says ‘yeah, I’ll give that a crack. There could br something in it.’
I really honestly thought this was a wind-up site and as such was spot-on! I laughed so much that I choked on my bamboo.
Now I am beginning to believe that you are for real and am still laughting as the tears of joy run down my furry legs.
I am mad as a Panda but I know it.
You lot are structurally deluded and living on your own wee planet. What colour is the sky and try not to form a committee to answer, if you can?
I may have been a little discourteous in tone in my previous posts here, so apologies. But that £80,000 figure is astonishing – you could, for instance, hire 5 local paper reporters – fully trained – for that amount. Pay in local journalism is peanuts – as no doubt your contacts in the NUJ have told you.
Do you have an idea of where you might get £80k?
For that sort of money I’d happily come and run even a left leaning blog.
F & F @20: That’s alright. I know the blog medium leads to a ‘take the piss first, then think about it’ style. I’ve done the same myself. In fact, one of the rightish bloggers who ( I think) has the most respect for my own scribblings started out with a piss-take that he was then grown-up enough to retract. See http://freethinkingeconomist.com/2009/12/07/in-which-i-admit-being-wrong-to-paul-cotterill-who-was-right/
Having said that, I accept that my speed-written post may have been a bit misleading around the 80k figure, especially as it was compared directly to the running cost (as reported by others)of Left Foot Forward’s budget. This is not the cost of running a blog like a Left Foot Forward for local people, it is the cost of a whole multi-media/activist operation; I don’t spell out what the costings might be precisely because they are, as I note, initial workings, which are clearly massively top secret but involve things like very local advertising, sponsorship, membership fees, specific ‘project’ income in the same way that, say, a planning consultancy might gather them in, and then a move into more ‘mainstreamed’ funding from parties/unions, and of course JK Rowling. You are right to compare, roughly, the costs of running a local newspaper, but conparison figures also need to be drawn from, say, the cost of a local council newsletter, and the costs of national party propoganda, and even ‘community devlopment officer’ costs. In short it’s not 80k for a blog.
What I’m trying to conceptualise in proto-business plan/prospectus temrs is post-blog blogging, where all sorts of activism may have its roots in blogging but is not restricted to it. And of course it’s an ideal, but as I said there’s nothing wrong with ambition per se, however wildy utopian socialist it is.
Tim @21: Nice of you to grace us with your presence. Similarly to my response above, I think you know that I know that you know I’m not saying it costs 80k to run a local blog. And anyway, the newly formed Committee for Revolutionary Post Hegemony Expansion of the Concept of What Blogging has vetoed your application on the basis of your past exposure to, and knowing acceptance of, reactionary indoctrination. The commitee does however thank you for your application and wishes you well in your rehabilitation.
Bugger the Panda @19: Yawn.
“And anyway, the newly formed Committee for Revolutionary Post Hegemony Expansion of the Concept of What Blogging has vetoed your application on the basis of your past exposure to, and knowing acceptance of, reactionary indoctrination. The commitee does however thank you for your application and wishes you well in your rehabilitation.”
Pity really as I’m certain that £80k a year would help in such rehabilitation…..
BTW, that article you link to says Left Foot Forward is on “a lot less than £100,000 a year”. Not around.
Tim @24: It’s not my decision, Tim. It’s the committee’s. I’m sure you understand.
Tim @ 25: Fair enough. Slightly odd wording though.
All: Mil has picked this stuff up with an interesting post, focused on the comments here rather than the OP: http://www.21stcenturyfix.org/2010/01/effective-left-wing-blogging-my-take.html
Well, there’s interesting and then there’s something of the cargo cult mentality with which Labour embarked on Members’ net. Praxis is key, not passivity.
You might find this series of posts by – and about – B4L / Andrew Regan’s new ‘Poblish’ project worth a look? http://blog.localdemocracy.org.uk/category/media-and-communications/poblish/
Guys, I’m joining this discussion a little late, though I think people ought to be aware of the Poblish application – http://www.poblish.org/ – I’ve been developing (to which a few oblique references have been made) over the past 7 months or so… (actually there is a general point about people needing to be aware of what already exists before thinking and planning afresh).
Now, there are too many comments for me to address in one comment, but essentially Poblish tries to: (i) solve aggregation once and for all – we can and will aggregate the political b’sphere in serious bulk; (ii) search, link and match related posts – thus drawing inferences that could so easily be missed – very, very well, and irrespective of ‘reputation’, popularity, etc.; we can and will be ‘semantic’ (iii) provide a technical platform – and support open data – so that other tools can use what we provide. So, for example, the Labour iPhone app, plus plans to aggregate masses of union blogs and allow trade unionists to discover one another easily. A final key aim is to encourage individual bloggers to work collaboratively, rather than post, wait to be noticed, and then for a stream of random comments to come in.
There’s a series of articles about Poblish, and the problems it’s trying to solve, beginning at the Local Democracy blog here: http://blog.localdemocracy.org.uk/2010/01/13/poblish-when-crowdsourcing-new-policies-dont-waste-existing-content/ . Part 2 is published on Monday.
I should add that Poblish is officially non-partisan. That’s not to say, though, that I don’t want fellow left-wingers to colonise it, make the fullest use of it, and also guide the development of it.
Oops, just noticed Paul Evans’s comment in a similar vein – GMTA
As you know, Andrew, I’m already signed up to Poblish. I’ll be watching how it develops; as I said when I joined the Facebook group you set up, it sounds a very intriguing proposition.
Paul and Andrew (b4l) : I appreciate this input. I feel a bit guilty about not keeping up with Poblish, and I promise to keep better abreast.
Having said that, I’m not sure that such developments, while welcome, are wholly relevant to what I’m trying to say here. The more I look at what I’ve written/am thinking, the more I realise simply that I’m not really talking about how blogging might lead to activism, but about how a new direction in activism might be aided by the techniques that blogging adds to the repertoire of local left wing media. And when we’re talking really local, we’re inevitably talking new content, not just aggregated and shared content, however well that process is done.
I’m a BNPer, and I just read everything you wrote.
I can see that the left is never going to make the slightest impact in the blogosphere. We run a BNP-supporting blog. There are four of us and we have no editorial policy at all – we write whatever we feel like writing as individuals. Local stuff, national stuff, international stuff. So one of the partners doesn’t like what I wrote today? So what? I’m not the one with the problem. That’s how blogging works. We’ve also got a few people lined up to become blog partners. No conditions on what they do and don’t write – they please themselves. We have been steadily picking up readers locally, nationally, and even have a few international readers. We’re slowly growing and gradually making links with other blogs – all informally.
Legal framework? Utter bollocks – just make sure you don’t libel anyone, that’s all the legal necessity you need.
80 Grand for 30-40K people? You have no idea at all do you – just go to blogspot, register a new blog than start writing whatever you feel like writing. Then go to other blogs and make comments, with a link back to your own blog through your profile. Make good comments and people will come for a sample read of your blog. If they like what they see they’ll keep coming back. Gradually you’ll develop a network of friends who think in similar ways. Or you’re crap in which case your blog will die.
Cost – zero.
Then start another blog with a new name.
That’s the trouble with leftards – you think everything needs organising and everything should cost money. Why should it? Aren’t you people prepared to work for nothing, because you believe in what you’re doing and it is a labour of love? I blog for nothing, my current partners in our blog blog for nothing. No advertising. NO MONEY INVOLVED.
A blog either grows organically like this, or it dies. I don’t suppose you’ll ever learn that though because your ideology wont let you. THERE MUST BE CONTROL.
No there mustn’t. Do you think Fawkes made a business plan and got funding before he started? Of course he didn’t – he just felt moved to write his thoughts and away it went. Easy and cheap – no cheaper than free.
We have absolutely nothing to worry about from you lot. I don’t know why I’m telling you this? I wouldn’t bother except I know it wont help you because you have your ideology to follow, and nothing will divert you from that.
Let go of the control idea – it’s the net for Chrissake – it’s not given to “control”. It’s a place for independent minded people – control freaks invariably fail.
I see that the far right continue their long tradition of spectacularly missing the point raised in this article, in the articles it draws on and in the comments.
Dave – the only point I can see to this article is that there is no point to it. Oh, it may contain some private ideological point, who knows.
But you aren’t dealing with an ideological world – it’s the REAL world out there – with real people and real stuff. And until you get that, you’re going to keep making zero progress.
Sorry to say stuff like this to you (really, I am, because I do believe you’re sincere. Why do I believe that? Mostly because I used to be one of you).
Then I grew up and started living in the real world. And no – no one who knows me would describe me as of the Right.
I suggest you look up the definition of ideological, Morgan.
And on several points in your tirade above, you misinterpret and ignore what has actually been written. On that basis I see no point in engaging with you, whatever political tradition you previously or currently hail from.
Your list of requirements is the reason why left-wing blogging has failed (thus far).
Simply put, why do you need all this organisation and money when the right didn’t, and still doesn’t?
What is special about left-wingers that means that you need all that, when the right-wing bloggers didn’t, are beating you in the fight for readers, and mostly vehemently rail against such centralised funding and control?
Nice to see another moron turn up armed only with blithe assertions.
If you actually want answers to your question, might I suggest you have a look around the articles linked to in the OP.