The Guardian publishes it’s annual Media 100 List. The top movers and shakers across UK publishing, advertising, TV and Radio are ranked 1-100 with ex-Australian and Left-wing dartboard pin-up, Rupert Murdoch, coming in at number 2. Less predictably, ‘A blogger’ sneaks in to the 94th slot. The Guardian muses as to what motivates these unusual blogger folk. After all, ‘they don’t get paid’ – let alone have a Union. Despite these extraordinary deficits, the Guardian is nothing if not gracious in conceding the New Force nature of this phenomenon, pointing to the post-Jayson Blair scandal downfall of Howell Raines, at the New York Times, as a prime example of bloggerdom’s immutable will.
Why doesn’t Oz Media run a similar sort of List? Could Oz Media run a similar sort of List? Would Eddie McGuire be on it? There are, indeed, more questions than answers….
I like this Guardian comment: “Another new entrant, at 94, is the ‘blogger’ … responsible, said one panellist, for the ‘first real democtarisation of the web'”. My guess is the said panellist has been reading Tim Dunlop’s essay.
Well, the panellist said ‘democratisation’, actually.
Tim’s is an erudite, readable and learned blog, but the NYT tie-in looks like a reference to Andrew Sullivan et al. Andrew hammered the Raines accountability drum – partly for reasons not entirely unrelated to his own personal travails with said worthy, one suspects.
Sullivan wasn’t shy about admitting to the history he had with Raines.
You can say that again bargarz ;