Though Cowards Flinch

 The accounts I’ve read of the Westminster Skeptics discussion earlier this week about the effectiveness, or otherwise, of political blogging have given the evening’s first speaker, Nick Cohen, fairly short shrift. 

He doesn’t seem very popular.  Certainly, Sunny’s pretty dismissive.

But I wonder if there was more in what he was trying to say than was  appreciated by a crowd largely interested in the development of high-profile, nationally focused blogs. 

This is what Dave Cole reports Cohen as saying (I assume paraphrased):

Blogs aren’t doing reporting or investigation, but duplicating the work of the mainstream media; there’s lots of blogging on PMQs but very little on select committees or the Lords. Equally, there is no coverage of England outside of London. He recalled something Alan Rusbridger had said – for the first time since the Enlightenment, we might see major cities without their own newspaper scrutinising what’s going on in the city and that this have never been tried in Europe before.

Mmm.  Certainly a pretty down beat assessment.  He certainly seems a pretty ‘glass half empty’ kind of bloke.

I happen to be a blogger living outside London, and know quite a few good blogs that cover events outside of London.   I also know how to develop small/medium scale social enterprises, something I suspect Nick’s never done.  Here’s my own ’glass half full’ assessment from last half month:

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.

Just like Nick’s, my assessment, and outline plan for the development of newspaper/blog/activism ’social businesses’ got pretty short shrift at the time from people who think they know what a blog looks like and what it will always, always look like. 

But maybe it’s not me and Nick that are wrong.  Maybe it’s everyone else who is behind the curve.

Me and Nick Cohen.  Bosom bodies.  Who’d have thought it?  We can go out for a pint with our other new best mate.