Sorry. Went out for dinner, drank some wine, late train back (nice 25-minute wait at Vauxhall) and had a small-child-related nocturnal disturbance, so had to have a little nap in front of Wimbledon today.
It was very Westminster-focused - a whole swathe of blogs that aren't about high politics were pretty much ignored. I think there are highly informative specialist blogs that don't fit neatly into the distinctions that were developed by the panel.
There was some four-star willy-waving between Iain Dale (Tory blogger) and David Aaronovitch, who hate each other. (The ostensible issue was the Times's unmasking of Night Jack, but this was obviously just a pretext.) It honestly looked as though there might be a punch-up at one stage. So that was nice. Dale also had a big go at Polly Toynbee and Jackie Ashley, both Guardianistas, for being inconsistent (Anne Spackman took him to task for this, asking why he had chosen to name two women.)
To be honest, I don't think much was said that hadn't been anticipated on here really. There were a few interesting themes though:
Economic model: John Lloyd (who introduced) pointed out that newspapers worldwide are dying or gravely ill, and he blamed the internet quite squarely. (He talked about all the papers that are failing in France, the NYT being propped up by a Mexican entrepreneur, and the Independent being in trouble over here.) He pointed out (as onebat did below) that nobody knows what economic model will replace the current print-based newspaper. Anne Spackman, who runs the Times's online comment section, echoed this. She says that although advertising money has fallen away from printed papers, it hasn't migrated to blogs or to online sites, other than Google (AdWords, I think she meant).
A further consequence of the failure of the print model is that there's no money available for old-style investigative journalism, which is time- and money-consuming. Bloggers are not a substitute for this.
Print journos tend to earn more than bloggers, who often have day jobs; the exception is Guido Fawkes, who is apparently as rich as Croesus. (Aaronovitch responded to this by saying 'In that case I'll tell my lawyers that it might be worth suing him after all.' Aaronovitch reckons he is regularly libelled by Guido's comment-monkeys.)
Do papers still have the power?: when Guido Fawkes wanted to make a big splash with his Damian McBride email, he had to go to the papers. Martin Bright (probably the only panel member you'd want to be stuck in a lift with) said that the truth was a bit more complicated. He pointed out that telly trumps both print and online platforms in terms of reach and power. (Mick Fealty pointed out that although the big story with Obama's campaign was that he raised loads of his money online, most of those funds went to buy television spots.) Bright also said that Downing Street is much more interested in his Spectator blog than in any journalism he ever had printed in the New Statesman. (But I guess nobody in the Labour govt reads New Statesman, do they?)
Unique attributes of blogs: a few people spoke about the 'peer-to-peer' tone of blogs and online comment, as opposed to the me-journo-you-idiot tone of some print comment pieces. Another feature is that bloggers tend not to come from insider Westminster (or other co-opted) circles. This makes them more approachable; their sources tend to be junior-level staff rather than senior officials, and their readers feel confident that bloggers aren't spinning messages handed down by party hierarchies. Blogs also don't have to 'guard' any brand, in the way some paper journalists might have to.
Aaronovitch alluded to male domination of blogs and comment sites, and wondered whether it's related to their lack of civility. He called blogs 'democratic but unreliable, as democracy often is', which I thought was a nice line. Iain Dale said that 85 per cent of his readership is male, but that this 'reflects levels of political participation'. Surely this is bollox? I mean, I know men tend to participate more than women, but not by that sort of differential.
The legal position The print journos are very pissed off at the legal mismatch between print/newspaper journalism, which has to get past stringent legal guidelines, and the current freedom of often-anonymous bloggers and (ahem) talkboard users to say hugely libellous things without being sued. They are particularly exercised (understandably) about the nasty things that are said about them when their articles are discussed online. Aaronovitch said 'accountability, to someone who is posting online, means being able to call someone a cunt'. (I think he gets called a cunt a lot.) Conversely, Mick Fealty reckons that the legal threat hanging over print journos makes them too cautious. Everyone agreed that a big-name blogger is going to get very, very sued sometime soon, at which point the sands will shift a bit.
Julia Hobsbawm is still very upset about the kicking she got on here when her book was published. She said that when the book came out, she went to 'the only online site that it was particularly relevant to' (that's us I think) and that we were being 'mean, nasty and spiteful'. I had been wanting to make a point about the wisdom of crowds, and how sites like MN can help you to refine your thinking and become better informed on the back of other people's wisdom and experience in a way that can't happen in a newspaper column, but at this point I thought better of it.
There were lots of journos in the audience - many more than there had been for the expenses panel, which surprised me. This issue exercises print journos a lot, I realised. Suzanne Moore was there. She has interesting hair.