Jeff Jarvis's columns in Media Guardian are always worth reading. This week's column asks whether the rise in 'open media' - notably blogs - means we should ditch newspaper leaders (comment columns) and the people who write them.
His view is that comment columns should be enablers not leaders of opinion. We can now all have our say, through private and media-run blogs. He goes on to suggest that publishers will no longer assume the prerogative to tell us what to think just because they buy ink by the barrel.
He's being (probably deliberately) innocent about the motives for newspapers to thunder their opinions. Rich men pay millions to buy newspapers as mouthpieces for their views of the world. It's the ultimate form of vanity publishing.
Editors and other leader writers craft their words with care, thinking (often over-optimistically) that the world cares what they and their proprietors think. Fifty years ago, William Haley's Times leaders delivered judgments of portentious solemnity: "It is a moral issue"; "Irresponsibility is rife". Today's Daily Telegraph leaders are equally absolutist in tone. The rise of the blog is hardly going to prompt newspaper owners to abandon what they see as their right to influence what we think.
I wonder what Julia Hobsbawm would make of it all ;) There's not much of a future for Editorial Intelligence if Jeff is right. Personally, I've always preferred to read 'guest' columnists in newspapers, rather than professional columnists. You can frequently predict what their opinion is going to be, and know that you'll either agree or disagree with it. You rarely learn anything, so it is pointless reading them. Guest columnists on the other hand can actually make you think as you are confronted with opinions/views you might not have considered.
Posted by: Stuart Bruce - Wolfstar | October 25, 2006 at 12:38 PM