The Australian Newspaper’s IT section today has an article on Blogging for fun and profit by Angus Kidman and Ian Cuthbertson. It features quite a few quotes from yours truly and some other good Aussie bloggers reflecting on Australian blogging, blogging for money, general blog tips and more.
Thanks to Angus (who blogs here) for giving me the chance to add my two cents worth.
Just read the article in hard copy before getting online, congrats on the quotes, the best part of the whole article, generally though I though the rest was pretty poor, rambling in style, a bizarre mix of statistics, and even weirder recommendations, and who the hell is Tama Leaver? Sure he’s a nice bloke, but he gets the record for the biggest plug on a totally obscure blogger in the National Newspaper award.
Unfortunately the whole thing smells like a typical Australian journalist who plugs his mates and doesn’t do his homework properly.
PS: is Angus related to Nicole? You may have been interviewed by the relative of a celebrity :-)
Thanks Duncan.
It’s always weird doing interviews via email with people – wondering what will be included and what wont.
Not sure who Tama is – thought you might know him as he’s from Perth! :-)
He sure got prime position and some nice exposure on the centre spread hard copy though – a little surprising looking at the size of his blog but good on him.
You might know my mother in law, she lives in Melbourne :-)
Um, WA has 2 million people, and I live 2 hours for Perth, having said this though if he lived where I do I probably would know him, living in the country side means you are only ever 1 or 2 degrees away from knowing everyone, which in some ways makes me pine for my anonymous ways of my earlier years in Sydney.
On more important things though, when are we ever going to get some serious blog related journalism in Australia. I’m tired of one fluff piece or another on blogging in my newspapers, I mean I’m starting to think that Podcasting gets a better and more serious run than Blogging.
I hear you mate.
I think there might be an article coming in the Age/SMH later in the week – but I’d like to see some column space dedicated to the papers on a regular basis too….
Yep, I thought The Australian piece was a bit composite, tying together little chunks of research. Darren’s bit was the most interesting, so the read was worth it ;-). For a quality newspaper though, it was rather thin gruel. Murdoch’s other quality rag, The Times (London), has done much better commentaries on blogging.
Duncan hard copy? How antiquated ;)
In reply to Duncan’s: “and who the hell is Tama Leaver? Sure he’s a nice bloke, but he gets the record for the biggest plug on a totally obscure blogger in the National Newspaper award. Unfortunately the whole thing smells like a typical Australian journalist who plugs his mates and doesn’t do his homework properly.”
I have no idea why Angus Kidman contacted me, but I’ve never met him before (and, indeed, haven’t yet since the “interview” was done by email with him in the UK). So, it’s not a case of Angus “plugging his mates”. When I was contacted all he said was that his editor wanted a “local blogger” profiled — by which I suspect he meant ‘a blogger no one really knows’. It might also be because I was involved with BlogNite which was an attempt by Perth bloggers to get together and invite the media and others to get involved and reflect on Perth’s emerging corner of the blogosphere. Or because the mainstream media still prefer finding sources from within the ivory tower of academia whenever possible since academics are supposedly more reliable interviewees for whatever reason (not that the article gave any sense of that – I have no idea why Angus chose the bits of the interview he did, but it certainly gave an odd picture of my blog!).