An example of how new medium does so, so much better. Take business news for instance. You can now go Bloomberg and listen to all sorts of in depth interviews with all sorts of people involved in the business world, economics etc. that is quite frankly superior to what you get from newspapers.

Book reviews at C-span are quite frankly terrific.

Old media has a tough fight on its hands. There have been on going rumours that Google will take over the NYTimes and somehow mesh into its product suite as a way of using that fantasitic brand name.

We shouldn’t cry for these older entities. Our choices are now so much more.

Not dissimilarly and equally understandably, bloggers themselves link, refer and relate to each other (online) with an obvious binding mindset if not culture being the mere fact they are bloggers. Bloggers and their pieces are linked and referred to differently, arguably, than had those same pieces, personalities or paras been included in some part of the msm, where, if in the latter, (arguably) those same referring bloggers may not give a tinker about it and might even shun it. This is evidenced by the otherwise non-partisan postings they make. By the same token found in msm, that’s tribalism.

Obviously each has its benefits and setbacks, in the pursuit of ideals mentioned here.

Tribalism may itself be an emotive and passionate word, struck-through with the desire to gather, protect, share, celebrate etc, and can go on to a hint of warfare - with us or agin us. (Emotion and passion are good things, not exclusively, yes?)

Humans want to gather - it’s a totally natural and beneficial thing to do; we see it in all manners of expression: sport, business etc. We can see dispassionately that in those fields a panoply of predispositions and personalities of peoples periodically or permanently preside or partake. They’re often called groups.

It’s the confection which is indeed pointless.

MSM tribalism of and within itself, and so too of and within blogging, is recognisably becoming eroded in some ways - those barriers may need to be much further eroded yet before either of them find their place in this brave new world. But it is inspiring that at the core of each is the overall binding quality of the human need to express.

That’s really interesting. I’ll have to check it out. That’s just the sort of thing I’m talking about. I think that the Internet etc offers a range of innovative potentials to allow serious writing/journals to target and reach audiences more effectively without going broke. Pursuing tribal strategies (which is certainly what Alterman was arguing in favour of even if I’m misreading Mark B) is misconceived and merely ends up prostituting and therefore devaluing the product in pursuit of mass market bread and circuses.

Without question the ideal of dispassionate enquiry and detached academic objectivity are unachievable goals (as I noted in the primary post). However they’re goals worth striving for, at least by way of seeking to acknowledge one’s own biases and present the other side of the argument where reasonably possible.

Without question the ideal of dispassionate enquiry and detached academic objectivity are unachievable goals (as I noted in the primary post). However they’re goals worth striving for, at least by way of seeking to acknowledge one’s own biases and present the other side of the argument where reasonably possible. It’s often hard to do that in the scope of a blog post without becoming boring and turgid, but that doesn’t mean you just give up and surrender to rampant ideological tribalism.

I really do find the enthusiasm for confected ideological tribalism from people like Alterman (and Mark B and Tim Dunlop) quite puzzling. It’s undoubtedly the case that people are attracted to a tribal ethos, hence “reality” shows like Survivor, Big Brother etc. However, although the tribal instinct no doubt conferred survival advantages on humans in the past, it’s highly doubtful that it does today, in fact its archaic but persistent nature explains lots of otherwise senseless instances of war, violence and general bastardry. Why encourage it for fun or profit?

In the political sphere, there has been no moment in history in at least the last 200 years when the real ideological differences between most of us have been so tiny. Nearly everyone in the West accepts the basic organisational structure of the capitalist mixed economy nation state, with progressive taxation and a social safety net and a fair measure of global free trade with low or no tariffs. Our ongoing enthusiasm for ideological tribalism is quite bizarre when the real ideological differences between nearly all of us are infinitesimal compared with any past era. Fukuyama’s end of history conceit was hyperbolic, but you can see what he meant.

Even in those circumstances, I can understand business entrepreneurs latching onto tribalism as a way to make a fast buck, but it’s much harder to understand why academics would happily embrace tribalism as an entertaining way to inject excitement into an otherwise dull social dynamic. That said, the occasional bit of playful pot-stirring doesn’t do any harm and can even help to enliven a turgid discussion, but not if people start to take it all too seriously and view largely confected divisions as huge, bitter and ineradicable. I certainly don’t think it’s a great idea to build the entire raison d’etre of a blog or magazine on confected tribalism, which seems to be what Alterman advocates in his article and Mark Bahnisch prescribed as a belated antidote to the demise of The Bulletin.

It might even result in a finer-grained, more “organic” and less fraudulent form of the knowledgeable liberal elite journalism that Walter Lipmann envisaged all those years ago, arising Phoenix-like from the ashes of print journalism.

If I understood correctly, so much was in fact the intention, with regard to current affairs at least, of pajamasmedia.

And for a long time Arts and Letters Daily has served that kind of a function for, well, the Arts and Letters.

And as you note, missing link daily is something of that ilk for the opinion pages.

I think it is a good thing - especially the flexibility and customisability you describe. But ultimately people seem attracted to a ‘tribal’ ethos - and so flock to the various forums, etc, on their topic and attitude of choice - kind of like the on-line version. And whilst I agree about the negatives of that, I suspect it is the likely result for the majority.

One possible cure might be that as more people grow up with this sort of stuff, and are hopefully exposed more to blogs and comments threads in school, there might emerge a greater proportion of society both accustomed to and keen on dialectic and argument. Reading newspapers or watching the news is generally quite passive, and you have to bother thinking about it yourself to find the arguments implicitly addressed or assumed. On a blog like troppo, they will generally be put out before you in a comment thread. On a blog like LP, they might be, or otherwise, timblair will have mentioned them for you and a quick search will reveal that.

Personally I would see that kind of phenomenon as a public good well worth having.

You seem to have caught the Zeitgeist here at any rate. A number of academic observers of the blogosphere, such as my Creative Industries colleagues Axel Bruns and Jason Wilson, have been making a similar argument about the potential of expert bloggers as contributors to public debate through a sort of citizen journalism role. I don’t disagree, or with a lot of the observations you make, but I doubt that expert opinion comes without its own political and ideological commitments, and I think it’s best for genuine debate if they’re not disguised under the guise of objectivity.

It’s the general principle of deliberately courting a partisan tribal ethos to build audience that troubles me. Eric Alterman flirts with it in his article that provoked this post. You’re clearly attracted to that model as evidenced inter alia by your recent response to the closure of the Bulletin, and LP has clearly been constructed to a fair extent with that model in mind. Tim Dunlop has also advocated it. Daily Kos (and for that matter Blair, Glenn Reynolds etc) illustrate the dangers of the model when taken to extremes. It’s certainly an effective way of building audience/”community” but at not inconsiderable human/social cost. I think a different and more dispered way of conceiving the potentiality of new media (at least for academic bloggers) is likely to prove more satisfying in the long run, although I acknowledge that many entrepreneurs are likely to exploit the partisan ideological tribal thing as a shortcut to building audience and revenue.

(1) LP encompasses ALP supporters, Greens and others who identify as lefties. If you look at all the Labor v. Green stoushes that go on in some quarters, I’m not sure that we’re all that tribal - hopefully a bit more inclusive than that.

(2) I hope we provide more substantive fare on the whole than Kos does… but that’s for others to judge.

Anyway, this is probably a distraction from the substantive points you make, though it’s a distraction you yourself invited too.

You’re misunderstanding what I’m saying if you think I’m advocating or imagining an “elite community”. It’s no doubt my own poor expression, but may I suggest you read the post again.

I simply meant that LP is the closest thing Australia has to a large Kos style ideologically tribal group blog. In those circumstances I find your response to Kos etc interesting though not surprising. I suspect that LP is just about as big as such a thing can get without any intelligent non-zealot finding it utterly stultifying and oppressive. I think the partisan tribal thing sets up social dynamics that are quite unpleasant and unproductive.

Even LP’s Mark Bahnisch confessed recently to finding it profoundly unsatisfying.

Not sure what the “even” is doing in that sentence, Ken. If you read any of the stuff I’ve written about blogging over the years, I’ve always been critical of the hyper-partisanship and superficiality of much (not all) of what passes for the “A-list” American blogosphere.

Funnily enough tabloids do more of these type of stories.