The document discusses blogging and the future of journalism. It provides details about Guido Fawkes' political blog, including its growth in popularity and role in breaking stories. It then covers criticisms of blogging, such as inaccuracies and lack of accountability. However, it argues blogging allows more voices and holds the media and politicians to account. New forms of online news like video blogging will become more prominent as the newspaper industry declines. Overall, it presents an optimistic view of blogging and its role in the changing media landscape.

1. Association for Journalism Education
18 June 2009
City University

2.  Tell you about the blog
 Give you my take on political reporting
 Thoughts on the business economics of
blogging and news making
 My take on the digital future
 Criticisms of blogging

3. Guido's Mission :
 Narcissism and personal amusement
 Mischief making
 Despair with the political class
 Despair with the Lobby system
 Despair with Private Eye, “Fiskers”
 Unwanted on Samizdata

4. 3,500,000
 September 2004
3,000,000
Total monthly hits 600
2,500,000
 September 2005
2,000,000
1,500,000
Total monthly hits 27,000 Page Loads
Unique Visitors
 Latest 3,600,000 hits
1,000,000
500,000
0

5. 3,500,000
May 2009
Page Loads
3,000,000
Unique Visitors
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0

6.  Guido’s blog is political scandal central
 No pretence to objectivity
 Guido is aimed at journalists, Westminster
insiders, wonks, politicians, the
Lobby, activists, spin doctors and broadcast
media
 During Tory and LibDem leadership battles
crucial point of information for activists

7.  Insider / Outsider?
 Guido has some credibility
 More Drudge than Wonkette
 Will be like Rush to Bush under Tories
 Journalists in the beginning gave Guido tips
 No longer. Guido sells to papers front pages
 Blogging journalists new competition
 Diarists were Guido's main competition

8. Press Plagiarist of the Year Award

13. Why Smeargate went to the papers
and not on Guido’s blog first.

14. Why Smeargate went to the papers:
 Wife is a feisty cautious lawyer
 Downing Street spinning “security threat”
 Legal issues over copyright and the manner
in which the emails were obtained
 Whistleblower laws exclude “for profit”
 Maximise the impact

15. The Lobby is an obedience school:
Come to heel and you get titbits.
How many political journalists can really hold
their head up high?
Cowardice and cronyism run right through the
Lobby, fearful of being taken off the teat of
pre-packaged stories served to them. That is
not journalism; that is copytaking.

16. Thoughts on the business
of news and blogging.

17.  No real general money making model in UK
for bloggers currently
 Popbitch and Guido are viable businesses
 Blogging plus traditional media pays enough
 Iain Dale does punditry / Guido sells stories
 Tech blogs make good money
 Some “specialist” blogs make money

18.  MessageSpace blog advertising network data
•The single highest paid blogger had sales
on average of £3,872 per month
•The top 10% of bloggers had monthly sales
averaging £2,861 in (Q4 ‘08) a rise of 64%
from £1,741 last year (Q4 ’07).
•The middle 40% of bloggers had
average monthly sales of £351.
•The remaining 50% had average monthly
sales of £54.

19. "How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary
People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and
Other Goliaths", by Glenn Reynolds. This is the 21st
century, the days of media conglomerates making
the news in a top-down Fordist fashion are over.
Boutique news sources will proliferate.
The "news" is no longer what Paxman says it is, the
news is whatever is disseminated to a wide
audience, Big Media is going to be disintermediated
when it falls down because technology has
drastically reduced the cost of dissemination. Failing
to hold our political class to account is the failing of
Big Media in Britain.

20.  First they sneered
 Then they feared
 Don't
worry, be happy, there will still be
news journalism without newspapers

21.  Video blogging is the future
 Podcasting is so yesterday
 The Press will be pixellated not print
 Newsrooms will survive, newspapers
won’t, they will be news brands
 More people read Guido than read
Private Eye, Hislop is wrong

22. Answering critics of blogging

23.  You get things wrong
 Unfiltered
 Noise to signal / ratio

24. The comments are profane etc.

25. You are beyond the reach of libel laws

26. Platform for wannabee journalists
 That is a feature not a bug
 Comment costs nothing and a lot of
paid for comment is rubbish filler
 News costs a lot to do professionally, maybe
NGOs and campaigns can do it on the cheap

27. Unaccountable and unedited:
Accountable to readers
 Sub-editing is crowd-sourced

28. Final thoughts:
 US has more paid bloggers than lawyers
 Read what was written about the Fourth
Estate and the coffee house pamphleteers of
yore, the same is now said of bloggers.
 Newspaper journalism isn’t something
sacred, it is a business.
A business that is failing.