And the point of blogging is...
There's plenty of debate these days about the value of blogs. The 91Èȱ¬'s head of interactive cheerfully accepts that 99% of all blogs, including some of the corporation's, are "complete crap".
Newsnight's own blogger, Paul Mason (Idle Scrawl), thinks that any TV or radio journalist who doesn't want some form of blog or web presence is mad.
Our own presenter Jeremy Paxman is at the sceptical end of the spectrum. Show me the evidence that numbers comparable to those who watch TV are reading blogs, runs his argument, and I'll start blogging. (Though it's not the case, as reported somewhere this week, that Jeremy refuses to podcast.)
Of course the numbers reading individual blogs will not reach the million or so who watch Newsnight every night any time soon, but it's the two-way nature of them that makes them compulsive and addictive. I don't know any of my contemporaries who would describe themselves as problem TV viewers, but I know plenty who can't leave Technorati alone.
Comments
Jeremy Paxman's reluctance to use blogs may be evidence that he is unable to express views, describe solutions and enter a dialogue and that he finds it far more comfortable asking questions. Who can disagree with questions? He focuses too much on arguments; The skill in winning an argument is so far removed from the skill in producing something that works and continues to work well. I suspect the reason is just technophobia although without a blog we can only speculate!
He should look at the replies to the posts on some of these blogs to see that they can (and do) provide a quality debating forum. Most coments are of a very very high quality compared to say message boards and in the cases where the blogger has replied the sense of enagement the user has is extremely rich.