Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Political blogging recap

Have been meaning to post a report on the political blogging discussion on Sunday, but had to wait until I arrived in the states to do it. I'm writing this from my parents' spread in Vermont, where I'll be for a couple of weeks. Anyway, the talk went really well. I was so impressed at how well informed everyone was, and was happy that the folks in the audience not only asked questions, but also shared their own opinions. In the end, it turned into a kind of seminar, which was great.

I won't do a long summary here, because Urbis are putting together a podcast of the talk and I'll post a link when it's up. But in the meantime two attendees, Stu at Feeling Listless and Stephen Newton, have filed reports of what transpired - go check 'em out.

A partial list of the other bloggers in attendence included panellists Norman Geras, Bill Jones and Martin Stabe, Roy Johnson, journalist and occasional Blood and Treasure contributor Kevin Gopal, MDDA director Dave Carter (who is starting a blog I hear...) and "lapsed blogger" Kate Taylor.

I'm going to be putting together some more of these talks about blogging and digital discourse, so let me know if there's a topic you think would make a good one. Music blogging and online writing about books and literature are two possibilities.

1 comment:

Stuart Ian Burns said...

Thanks for the link.

I'm inevitably going to make myself into a cliche and say something about film and television and entertainment blogging which is a very furtile area and worth talking about -- especially in light of such things as the Snakes on a Plane phenomina but also in relation to how they have to some extent replaced fanzines but are also being read by the writers/directors/producers to get instant feedback on their product -- Joss Whedon reads and comments on Whedonesque for example. There are also the examples of how rumours begun on blogs gain currency and are frequently reported in the press to the extent that the person they're referring to will be asked about is and have to bother to deny it. Also, to what extent are people getting their media news from blogs like Cinematical or Chud instead of the traditional press -- and often entertainment blogs like Gawker and The Superficial will 'break' tabloid stories with some regularity...