Oliver Kamm on Blogging – Reprise

Via the England Project, I am drawn once more – reluctantly, I might add – to Oliver Kamm. Again he demonstrates a lack of understanding of the blogging medium:

That question seems to me less important than the debaters’ conclusions; Dale’s are wrong and Ms Alibhai-Brown’s right. There are good and bad blogs, but the medium overall impoverishes our democracy.

Really? And how does Ollie reach this absurd conclusion?

So far from being “democratic and egalitarian”, the proliferation of political blogs narrows the range of opinion presented in the public square, to the extent that blogs are taken seriously as an intermediary for debate.

Unlike political journalism, of course. Ah, but, these serious heavyweights are “professionals” unlike we happy band of amateurs. The proliferation of political blogs does not narrow the range of opinion, indeed exactly the opposite is true. Since I started engaging with blogs I have been exposed to a variety of opinions on a wide range of subject matter. Some of it is witty, well written and well informed. Some of it is dire. I am more than capable of reaching a conclusion about whether I trust the writer. As an example, I would trust a blogger writing from a position of professional expertise somewhat more than I would trust a journalist.

Kamm then quotes Jeremy Stangroom who proves to be equally wrong:

I share Stangroom’s view on the merits of blogging: “My argument is that when a whole medium is characterised by entrenched positions then you tend to get heat not light.”

I am capable of sifting through this plethora of opinion and allowing it to fertilise and influence my own opinion. Indeed, I have changed my opinion on more than one issue and observed at least one other blogger do likewise as a consequence of such engagement. While it’s true that Neil Harding’s epiphany on ID Cards was a consequence of pragmatic rather than ideological argument, the point stands that he reevaluated his position. This is how political debate works – a carefully constructed argument with reliable sources is put into the public domain and we can pick and choose. That is democracy at grass roots level. It is democracy without the need for political journalists who seek to feed us their fodder and expect us to absorb it like good little children. The proles have found the means to communicate among themselves and this is a good thing, not a bad one. It is healthy for democracy, no matter how mediocre the blogging may prove to be. Politics is about the people and the people need a voice. Now, it seems, they have one. Those entrenched positions are rather less entrenched than Kamm or Stangroom believe them to be.

Kamm demonstrates in this piece that he has little understanding of what blogging is. He offers us the Graunaid’s dreadful Comment is Free as a justification for his criticism. He is quite right, it is a cesspool of bile. It is not, however, a blog. It is a newspapers’ attempt to play along. Rarely have I seen genuine engagement from the original article’s writer with the commenters. There is not a conversation here; simply the post and take it or leave it. The complaint about abusive comments is fair enough, but simply dealt with, should the Graun choose to.

Comments are the lifeblood of blogs. Here, we can we engage with the writer. Although as one of the commenters on the England Project points out, one cannot do so with Kamm. This means, therefore, that what Kamm presents as a blog is nothing of the sort. It is simply another tedious newspaper opinion column. We are presented with the world according to Kamm and we can take it or leave it. I’ll do the latter, thanks.