In a beautiful piece of flame-bait, the BBC’s Andrew Marr has criticized bloggers the world over, stating that they are socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother’s basements.”  He goes on to say that most bloggers are very angry people writing late at night whilst very drunk and that this will never replace journalism.

Is he right?  A little bit.  Is he wrong?  A little bit.  Is his comment a bit stupid?  A little bit.  Has he missed the point?  Probably.

Lets have a look at his statement about most bloggers being very angry people.  This is at least partially spot-on, as the reaction that a lot of bloggers had was outbursts of semi-literate anger spouted into Twitter or across the blogosphere.  If someone accuses you of being angry, the best way to disprove this is probably not to scream “@!#? you!  I’ll @!#?ing kill you!” but there we go, so yes, a lot of bloggers are angry.  That being said however, a lot of writers in general are angry.  Writers have to get their passion and zeal from somewhere and sometimes that’s anger, so maybe being angry isn’t such a big problem.  Incoherency is the bigger problem and often accompanies anger, but at the risk of becoming incoherent myself, we’ll leave that for now.

The idea that what Marr describes as “citizen journalism” is of low quality is also for the most part true.  The general public now has access to such a huge amount of eye wateringly advanced technology that allows them to broadcast their opinions and set forth their very soul to the world.  The only problem is that a large portion of the general public has occasionally frightening opinions and their very soul is not always particularly interesting, which is to say nothing of most people’s inability to articulate what they think.  The signal to noise ratio of social networking sites, twitter or blogs in general is high, with the first two swamped with comments like “having an apple lol!” or “omg off for drinkz!” and the latter containing a couple of posts saying “I don’t know what to write this is my blog isn’t it great amazing lol!” before never again being updated.  When you consider the sheer empowerment offered by wordbress, blogger or youtube, it is the equivalent of the sort of technology that up until a few years ago would only have been in the hands of professionals.  However, all the technology in the world will not amount to high quality content.  As a side note, any video game featuring user generated content will first be swamped with phallus-like objects, rip offs of other games and only a few sparkling gems of professional level quality and the same could possibly be extended to the wider internet community.

I’m not sure that Marr is right to dismiss bloggers and by extension blogs themselves.  As for replacing the traditional model of journalism, it could be argued that it’s already happened and it’s just that the results won’t be seen for another generation or two.  I only know one person in my circle of friends who gets a newspaper on a regular basis and the rest of my more-well-read-than-me friends all rely on a combination of blogs and blog-like news sites compiled into a single feed.  On the rare occasion that I pick up a paper, I find myself reading stories that I read a couple of days before or items that feel like they’re filling space.  I don’t see that traditional newspapers will see much of a fresh intake of new subscribers, as most of this generation will be consuming news from their smart phones or work computers as opposed to an awkward mass of paper that leaves ink on your fingers and isn’t freely available.

Blogging won’t replace journalism, but that’s mostly because a lot of it can’t be described as anything other than journalism.  A blog is not a type of writing; it is merely a publishing platform.  A blogger is someone that posts to that platform, but a large number of bloggers can’t be described as anything other than journalists.  A fantastic example of this is Guido Fawkes at orderorder.com, a very influential blogger who has broken stories before major broadsheets and consistently churns out high quality, reliable and insightful investigative journalism.  Journalists don’t need to fear bloggers as they’re pretty much the same thing, but publishers and broadcasters may have something to worry about in the future as blogs are proving in some cases to be lucrative business ventures. 

So Andrew Marr is right and he is wrong in his statement.  The statement itself is also a bit weird.  I’m not sure that he’s actually talking about bloggers anyway.  His use of the term “citizen journalist” and referring to the anonymity of commenting makes me think of someone that frequently uses comment sites such as the BBC’s “have your say” or someone that merely participates in the discussion of other websites or through forums.  I know Andrew Marr is a man of above average intelligence, so I’m sure that he does know what a blog or blogger is and I’m sure he wouldn’t have made such a flippant comment without realizing he was probably alienating a few of his colleagues at the BBC itself, so maybe this is just a feeling I get.

Finally, there’s something incredibly inflammatory about the bile that he throws out about a stereotypical image of a blogger.  It was funny when Malcolm Tucker said something almost identical in “The Thick of It”, but that’s Malcolm Tucker, a caricature of an angry, outdated and constitutionally dangerous political concept, not Andrew Marr, a political broadcaster with his own show on the BBC.  What exactly is wrong with being bald or single anyway?  Isn’t it only the “cool kids” at school that honestly had a problem with someone having pimples?  As for the idea of bloggers living in their mother’s basement, maybe I’ve just had a very sheltered existence, but a young adult living in their mother’s basement is a horribly American cliché that doesn’t really work over here.  Whereas moving into a basement is quite a common thing to do after college in America, most graduates over here get to actually stay in their old bedroom until someone will employ them…

Maybe Andrew Marr is trying to provoke discussion, or maybe he said it as a bet.  Perhaps he’s over exposed, can’t take the pressure and a personal prejudice slipped out because he was tired.  Maybe Andrew Marr is just a drunk and angry journalist.  Regardless, it doesn’t really matter:  As long as the internet remains a neutral publishing platform, blogs and bloggers aren’t going anywhere.  Even if they don’t replace traditional journalism, they will certainly offer some strong competition for it and competition is never a bad thing.