Wine146;s better, bully for beer

I think Reynolds is cool. I think Rupert Murdoch, who in April 2005 argued that newspapers would perish at the hands of blogs and other 8216;new8217; media outlets, is uber-cool. But I also think Reynolds, Murdoch and many others who argue along similar lines are wrong being cool never required that you be right. If you think my argument is hopelessly compromised because I earn my living from the established old media, go on and nastily blog about it. But give me a minute to also argue that we, the old media, would be making a dreadful error, in principle and tactically, if we extend our disinclination to take blogs too seriously to a disinterest in defending bloggers.

Of all the newspapers I regularly read, only two, the Indian Express and the Economic Times, had frontpaged the ban-on-the-blogs story in their Tuesday edition. I wish the story had that every-newspaper-in-town-is-angry-at-the-government feel to it.

The official psychology behind the ban is frightening. To ban a few blogs, the government ended up denying access to millions of them. This was inevitable given the nature of the technology. But that was precisely what the government should have thought of 8212; the rights of millions over the babble of a supposed lunatic fringe. The lunatic fringe has a right, too. If 8216;Hindu8217; bloggers and 8216;Muslim8217; bloggers are trashing each other, they should be able to unless there8217;s incontrovertible proof of their direct complicity in crime. That8217;s what 8212; apologies for the cliche, but it is unavoidable 8212; democracy is all about.

It is scary to think ministers and bureaucrats in the world8217;s largest democracy can so easily act like the apparatchiks of the world8217;s largest one-party dictatorship, China. The next time the communications minister, Dayanidhi Maran, under whose watch this gag order was executed, talks big about the internet and its potential, I hope blogs blister with sarcasm.

And I hope newspapers do, too. Because what is at stake here is fundamental for the old media. Blogging is editor-less self-expression, unregulated opinion venting, free form communication, it8217;s one guy saying what he wants and other guys sometimes reacting to what he says 8212; it is chatter. And without the right to converse, there would have been no established big media. The right of the media to say what it wants is inseparable from the right of the people to say what they want. In which country do unfree people coexist with a free media? That should be the established media8217;s in-principle objection to the blog ban.

There8217;s also a tactical reason for the established media to be worried. If today we shrug off a ban on blogging as something peripheral, tomorrow we invite egregious official attention to, say, comments posted on newspaper and TV news websites. Silly but supremely self-confident home ministry bureaucrats may ask why a newspaper is hyper-linked repeatedly in an 8216;offensive8217; blog. At a time the nation is gravely threatened why are those guys reading you so much is a government query that would drive most editors of the established media apoplectic, especially since most of them look at the internet as a revenue and readership accelerator. Journalists8217; jobs are not in danger because of what bloggers write. But a journalist8217;s job is defined in part by a blogger8217;s rights.

Now, why do I say blogging can8217;t replace old-fashioned journalism? One simple reason: it takes money, resources, an establishment, training and editors who act as gatekeepers to gather and present news. Blogs don8217;t have the infrastructure for newsgathering. If a blog did, it would be a newspaper, not a blog. This is the error cool guys like Reynolds and Murdoch make. When serial blasts hit Mumbai, could one blogger, however brilliant, tell you what happened? Could he also tell you what was happening in Israel the same day? The form in which news is presented may change. But the organisational character of newsgathering can8217;t.

By its very nature, news needs lots of people to produce it and those people need the backing of money. It is terribly fashionable to say these days that young people get all their news from blogs. It is also terribly wrong to say so. Young people can get their daily news fix from blogs because blogs have the established media to get the news from. Just because the odd blogger breaks news sometimes or because blogs can catch a journalist cutting corners 8212; keep that up, bloggers 8212; doesn8217;t change this basic economic fact.

Which is why news-related blogs, if you notice, is mostly opinion for or against news published in the established media. They are reactive. They are also, to put it politely, of enormously variable quality. Blogs are mostly ignorable chatter. There are no entry barriers and no performance appraisals in blogging, unlike in journalism.

So, I think I have a better analogy than Reynolds. Journalism is like making wine. It takes time, money and organisation for the product to mature. Of course some journalism, like some wine, is plonk and some can leave a real sour taste. But it8217;s only blogging, not journalism, that8217;s like making beer.

But bless the bloggers who point out the vinegary equivalent of journalism. And let no journalist forget the importance of beer.