the paper where tech journos do not read blogs unless they use Macs

Maud has noted that those who decry blogging may live to eat their words.

I take note of this with especial regard to Graeme Philipson's funny little piece in the Tech pages of The Age on Tuesday:

"Data from Nielsen/Net Ratings shows that Australian internet users access many fewer pages (sic) than do most of those in North America and Europe, despite spending about as much time online... We play more sport, we have better weather and we are not as reliant as people in some countries on indoor leisure activities."

In the very next paragraph, he does a complete backflip:

"Our data shows that we read as much or more than many other countries, and our Internet usage rates (as opposed to cost and speed) are right up there."

He goes on to natter unconvincingly about Australians being 'laconic' rather than chatterers or shouters, and clearly has never ever heard of the Australian Blog Index or Australianblogs.com.au, nor has he read anything on Crikey about political blogs or kept up with Frank Arrington the prominent Australian Microsoft blogger, or Darren Rowse, the pro-blogger who earns six figure sums from working in his pyjamas, or Cameron Reilly of the Podcast Network (all of whom have been reported on at his paper).

Philipson would be unlikely to know that Father Bob Maguire blogs most successfully, here. As he admits at the end of his article, he doesn't read them. Why, then, does he feel the need to make generalisations about the state of the small but perfectly formed Ozblogosphere?

This more sanguine post by Mark Bahnisch at LarvyProd gives a happier spin to it all. If the Ozblogosphere doesn't exist, as Philipson seems to be insinuating, then the Government Gazette's editors were just hallucinating the other week. Happy birthday to all of us, each and every one.

Comments

[Ann O'Dyne]

re "Australian internet users access many fewer pages (sic) than do most of those in North America and Europe, despite spending about as much time online.."

Maybe we read read read long opinion pieces ?

[Jon Y]

you go girl!

[genevieve]

Jon, I have to get around and blog your site some time soon - it's looking fabulous. Time for a proper visit, I just breezed past yesterday and it certainly looks like the joint is jumping.

[Davey]

It's all so old isn't it? The 'blogging' article seems to be one that's on file in most newspapers these days, and trotted out every month or two by journos too lazy to write anything original on the topic. Kind of like the 'poetry is dead' article we see every now and then, with all the usual suspects quoted. Boring!

[genevieve]

Couldn't agree more, David. I guess, too, I'm disappointed because it comes from a tech editor - he of all people should know blogging is huge in his field. Just mammoth. And yet he reads none! It was a funny layout on paper, too - two very negative pieces on blogging, with a break out box carrying a great article on the BlogHer conference coming up in Chicago at the end of this week, from Felicity Kennedy. Almost like they couldn't bear to write positively about women blogging unless they surrounded it with bad karma. As we say in these parts, meh.
Balancing that, Sophie Cunningham had a wonderful piece on writers and blogging in the A2 (which I shall blog pronto). So someone over there is getting with the program, it just ain't the tech staff.

[Lisa]

I agree, blogging articles are so passe. It's like they are aimed at a 'don't even use the internet' audience (which is weird considering most papers have an online counterpart... with blogs) and always seem to be creating a moral panic around the subject. It completely segregates young people and people who access stuff on the web - which is, I think, a majority of the Australian population.

[genevieve]

Lisa, it's six months since I was reading much on the matter, but the point you make about segregating audiences is a crucial one, and it puzzles me that a tech editor wouldn't be more aware of this. It's well known, for example, that the Guardian was one of the smaller papers in the UK until its phenomenally successful online component got under way. Now their total readership is something like 7.5 million, with about 4 mill. of that coming from international readers.

I'm going to go compare the remodelled Oz tech section with Next now - a bit perplexed yesterday when I flipped through it though, as they were claiming they have been bringing tech news to Australia 'for 40 years'!!