Harmless Noise
A music blog from Ireland.
A music blog from Ireland.
(No Ratings Yet)“Bloggers! Just tell them to bloody well sod off to their grubby dingy little bedrooms.” Spat Terry Coverly, the downtrodden press secretary from Armando Ianucci’s hilarious BBC2 sitcom The Thick Of It, in response to an aide’s concerns that bloggers would be the first to spread rumours. It’s a funny quote because it’s quite true – lots of bloggers do work from grubby spaces, like pretty much anyone who works from home and finds the flow of information so exhaustive there’s rarely time for such things as housework or exercise. True for me anyway….
While bloggers still face a distinct degree of derision from various sources, their usefulness is growing every day. Unlike most utilities, blogs have a glamour and charm of their own despite being functional websites as a result of the individual voice and tastes of the writer. And although there’s been a great deal of debate about the Internet’s effect on the print media, blogs have never been an attempt to replace the magazine. There’s a distinct difference between settling down for a long read of a mag and clicking a link to hear a new song or watch a video.
Back in the summer I was asked to contribute my opinion as a blogger to Steven O’Rourke’s thesis ‘Is There a Future in Dancing About Architecture? An examination of the role of the professional music journalist in Ireland in an era of citizen journalism‘. Along with my own, the views of four other music bloggers (2UIBestow, Asleep On The Compost Heap, Swear I’m Not Paul, Those Geese Were Stupefied) were contrasted with those of three established print journalists (Stuart Clarke, Jim Carroll and John Meagher) and one middleman blogger/columnist (Nialler9). I don’t know the other interviewees’ thoughts on the thesis and it’s a very interesting read but not something I have covered on the blog this year as I felt many of the summarisations lead to some contentious issues. I won’t go into the print journalists’ opinions of bloggers just yet but focus on what I consider to be issues raised in the thesis.
The bloggers involved were portrayed as cheerleaders and according to Steven: “It is…clear that many of the bloggers believe that cheerleading is irreconcilable with the role of critic and, it seems that many have chosen to forsake criticism in order to promote the music they like to their readers.” We certainly do promote the music we enjoy, because we maintain our own individual sites according to our tastes. The difference between a blog and a magazine is that the writer of a blog is not handed commissions by an editor which necessitate completion in order for payment. What kind of blogger would write about music that gave them no pleasure, unless they derived pleasure from writing about music they don’t like? Doing so would then infer a nasty kind of attitude, simply bashing music for the sake of it or to stimulate sensationally high traffic. There is a great difference between spending time and money promoting good music that needs to be heard and that of a cheerleader, which simply means ‘an enthusiastic and vocal supporter’. Anyone who buys an album, applauds at a concert or recommends an artist to friends is a cheerleader. Considering music journalists and bloggers alike are equally committed to extra-curricular pursuit of music, it seems unfair that bloggers in particular were labelled with such a patronising term.
However the word ‘cheerleading’ was not mentioned at any point in the questionnaire that I and other bloggers completed and neither was ‘archivist’ nor ‘critic’, despite the fact that those labels were integral points made in the dissertation;”While many of the bloggers interviewed outlined the importance of cheerleading, scant mention was made of critiquing.” Scant mention was made by Mr O’Rourke, I might add – the majority of his questions revolved around our opinions of music journalism in Ireland,its current state compared to ten years previously, the role of a good print writer, how blogs in Ireland compare to those abroad, the influence on the music-buying public and the future of music journalism vs. blogs. But there’s more. While the bloggers involved spoke of their desire to share good music that is overlooked, when it came to cheerleading, the print journalists were far more concerned with being the first to discover a new band.
Stuart Clarke of Hot Press expressed this clearly: “For the most part you want to be an evangelist, you want a band you discovered and wrote about first to be loved by the masses” and continued with “I think the Internet is exceptional for building up hype around a band, but I‘ve yet to see a band having their career sustained by the blogosphere.” That’s very interesting indeed as, for example, bands who garner regular blog coverage such as Adebisi Shank, ASIWYFA, The Cast of Cheers, TDCC and Villagers have enjoyed exceptional success in 2010, both on- and off-line. Bloggers however, have not been using this as a platform from which to self-congratulate but rather, use it to congratulate their readers in their support for good music.
“Like that of the critic, the role of the archivist appears to hold little appeal to the bloggers interviewed. As outlined in the cheerleading section, bloggers appear to have a preoccupation with what is new, with very little attention paid to what may be considered historically important in the future,” and “unlike critiquing, bloggers actively engage in archiving even though they may not be conscious of it.”
Well, talk about stating the obvious in terms of archiving. We date-stamp our posts and cross-reference to previous articles of our own and others’ through the months and years, tracking the progress from a first gig, to album, to record deal or international recognition. That is blogging 101 and practically every blogger remembers every post and artist they have covered. Why else would some bloggers write ‘Introducing….’ posts? However, again O’Rourke neglected to mention that the majority of printed music articles pertain solely to the zeitgeist; an established band with a new album will easily garner hefty column inches, regardless of whether that band or their music is any good, simply in order to sell more papers.
Bloggers in fact have the upper hand: they can and do return to old music which is worthy of further attention and can post a video or interview with a band who have not released recently, simply to share it based on merit. And while papers and magazines are quick to hop on a band who have attained widespread recognition at any particular point, to fulfill that zeitgeist/promotional requirement, in many cases the band or musician involved have been featured on blogs for a long time before that, building up the fanbase that give them the push towards more-mainstream success.
In terms of critique, it seemed quite under-handed that Steven O’Rourke also chose to omit the fact that not only do many bloggers review albums on their sites, but also, of the five bloggers questioned, three are regular contributors in a journalistic capacity to magazines and other music news sources, not just with reviews but also interviews and features, which require professional writing and research skills. However, this is overlooked even by the print journalists, who regardless of any blogger’s resume, still dismiss the majority opinion. As John Meagher of the Independent said: “For example, there are about 1,000 Irish bands out there doing their own thing. A very small portion of them are any good but you wouldn’t know that by the way they are being promoted by bloggers. That’s one of the dangers of citizen journalism”. I’d be at a loss to name any solitary Irish blogger who has championed 1000 new Irish bands. However when more than ten bloggers all agree that this is a particularly creative period in Irish music and the content of their blogs reflect this, when viewed as a venn diagram of sorts, it is clear that the agreement of these disparate music lovers must point to a simple truth: the portion of bands agreed by music bloggers to be good, must surely, be good.
Illustration from www.thevarguy.com
This depiction of bloggers as unreliable does not help when compared to the print journalists’ opinion of bloggers. There was an unanimous opinion amongst the writers that bloggers are simply bigging up their friends. Let me just say, for all my friendly demeanour in public and my drinking and gigging habits, there are only three musicians’ phone numbers on my mobile that I would use to text for non-work related reasons. Three friends in bands – the other people I know, that I’ll have a drink with, say hello to at gigs and voice enquiries which revolve around gigs and recording sessions , are just acquaintances. Nice, cool acquaintances but nothing more. I have a few more on Facebook but…they don’t exactly email asking how I am and whether that nasty cold cleared up. And when I think of the bloggers involved in Irish music, I’m one of the more sociable types. Certainly Darragh McCausland and Karl McDonald, who blog about of Montreal and Jay-Z along with Hunter-Gatherer and Hipster Youth, aren’t on Christmas card terms with their subjects. Ronan Hunt-Murphy is based in Wexford where there are very few gigs or musicians passing through while Peter Nagle is a schoolteacher and father who organises gigs in Slane, Co. Meath, and isn’t particularly chummy with the subjects of his blog bar email correspondence. Yet the journalists’ opinions suggests that we should all be living in a commune, so deep is the love:
One reason for this may well be to do with issues of integrity. Stuart Clark certainly thinks so when he says that “you don’t really have issues with the truth or people hiding relationships with musicians in print media.” John Meagher agrees saying that “you have the phenomenon, particularly in blogging, where people are ‘bigging up’ their friends and then not coming clean about that.”
Jim Carroll goes on to say that it’s the biggest problem in Irish music journalism though he believes that it is not just confined to the blogging community. “The biggest issue with Irish music journalism is the failure to declare an interest. It’s a huge problem. I don’t mind if people are related to people in bands or are friends with them, it’s too small a scene for that not to happen, but journalists and bloggers should have enough cop on to refuse to write about them.”
While I agree with Jim Carroll‘s opinion in this instance, why should any writer adhere to rules that make no difference when the sterling example of music on offer is enough to provide an objective example of quality? Knowing someone who has made a great album should not be a reason to refuse to write about it, especially if the print journalists have no time for an obscure act, as a result of their editors’ compromised loyalties to the featured artists in their publications. While I have outlined that personally, I am not particularly good friends with any musicians or industry workers, a lot could be said about the media, where professional and social connections bring people into contact with influential characters whose reach extends quite deeply into the music business. In many cases, music journalists operate on a ‘not what you know but who you know’ basis. Very few bloggers move in such circles or operate under such compromises and as a result, have no qualms about calling a spade a spade when it comes to overhyped artists. Yet this kind of criticism is overlooked and undervalued for less relevant concerns of whether a blogger goes to the gigs of the artists they promote.
Music writers don’t/should not write from a lofty tower of expertise insisting that their opinion is infallible but rather, should simply suggest the reader with interests of a certain kind may like to hear something of similar quality. In fact, journalists have been known to descend to dubious standards in order to make a profit from their writing, even going as far as to review an album or gig negatively in one instance, only to rescind that opinion for a favourable one in a different publication. Bloggers know that their music sites a categorical archive of their tastes and so, if by chance they change their mind about a particular artist or song, must be forthright and honest about it, and provide a decent explanation as anyone clicking the artists’ tag of that blog would immediately be faced with conflicting information.
Although the network of communication is growing stronger through social media, the bloggers of Ireland, as I mentioned, are in reality quite a disconnected, loose bunch of people who hold no loyalties to any specific outfit or organisation, even if they also freelance for a paper or magazine, their independent blog is a place where their individuality stands alone. However there is a misconception that Irish blogs are a clique, in each others’ pockets and sycophantically supportive of one another, subscribing to a hipster attitude that they’re the saviours who can dispel the occlusion and obscurity of music, arrogant in their belief that the music they publicise is better than anything anyone else knows. This stereotype is also evident in Steven O’Rourke’s thesis under the sub-headings of “I saw them in Whelan’s back when they were supporting The Frames” and “They’re a really good band, but you won’t know them”. This preconception is so misleading and as far from the truth as it’s possible to get. Most Irish bloggers are simply driven by a desire to strengthen the network of support for local music and to do this, face stiff opposition from the mainstream music fans who dismiss the merits of music in favour of general appeal. Some fiery debates have broken out amongst bloggers and therein lies the real winning factor of writing independently; journalists may write ascerbic columns or articles but have no way of interacting with their readers – bloggers with conviction can and do challenge a stimulating exchange of views and sometimes, now and then, the blogger will succeed in changing someone’s mind and make a new fan of the local scene. It takes guts to stand alone and deliver an argument against something that anyone can counter with equally convincing points, and even then, that’s when a blogger is lucky. More often than not, a frank exchange leads to criticism, sometimes by dozens of commenters but bloggers continue to do it without the protective wall of incommunicative paper.
So when I was asked to join the panel of judges associated with the Digital Socket Awards, I had my concerns about fuelling the illusion that Irish bloggers are a cabal of arrogant cheerleaders with too much time on their hands. So much work is involved to bring a project like that to fruition and for a bunch of amateur event organisers with no material ties, the chances of failure were potentially huge. But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that it was a risk worth taking. The single unifying factor that extends from Belfast to Cork, Kildare to Wexford and Galway to Dublin is the fact that every one of us sets aside our time each day to setting one more brick in the foundations of the Irish music scene. And this year has been the most rewarding and positive period of Irish music that I can attest to in the last five years of working in music, which may not seem like much but even those who were making music ten or fifteen years ago agree with the sentiment. So why not celebrate that music and at the same time, recognise that regardless of what the media or the music business think, blogging is a good thing? It presented a chance for some of Ireland’s most dedicated music fans to share a common goal, to bring together a group of people who really should be friends but aren’t. And when the live event has passed in February and we have come to a conclusion on the best album, radio show and song of 2010, maybe we won’t be friends, maybe the journalists will still think we’re fanatic timewasters, but maybe, just maybe, we’ll recognise each other at a gig, smile and say hello.
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Great post. I was actually going to (try to) write something later about blogging and being a critic. Is there a difference and should there be a differerence? But the answer is obvious and you answer it: why would you write about a band you don’t like? Unless you go about it humorously about why people shouldn’t listen to The Coronas (just an example) then you should just ignore them. I go to all the different Irish blogs to find something which might be good and why there are some questionable inclusions and stuff that makes you shrug, inevitably you will find some great songs.
I have been blogging for almost a year now and as I have said elsewhere, I didn’t know what direction the blog would take nor what it would be about. If you look at the very early, staggered posts then you will see just how directionless it was. But I love listening, writing and telling people about a great band or song. And throughout the year I found that Irish bands were making music that could stand up to anything else and they get included based on merit.
But if it weren’t for blogs where would the likes of Popical Island and Squarehead be? I have not bought Hot Press regularly this year, but if it wasn’t for Nialler9 and this blog among others, then would they have come out on top of Niall’s songs of the year list? I still dunno if I can think of a band I ever found out about through HP through my years of reading it.
Also in my year I can honestly say that bar a few interviews with bands, I have never hung out with any of them. Nor have I featured my friends’ bands once. I have met one blogger in the year. And he was sound.
Again, great post
My big problem with print music journalism in Ireland is that, in spite of what Stuart Clarke says, the critiquing aspect is effectively dead and there is a very simple reason for this. No room. It is not possible to write any sort of interesting, critical review of an album within the space afforded to album reviews in the print publications. All that can be done is short two or three paragraph variations on “yeah this is good” …. “their first one is good but this isn’t so good” … “this is rubbish” … “I don’t like this much”. There’s not much more that can be said within those constraints. It’s not criticism because criticism does not just mean the ability to be negative as well as positive. This isn’t the journalists fault .. or maybe even the editors fault. It’s probably more to do with the economics of producing newspapers and magazines, and it’s a shame.
Something that I deal with in detail in the thesis too. Blame the editors.
Hmm, not sure what to say really.
First off, I’m obviously going to defend my thesis. As to how good or bad it is, that’s for other people to decide but to suggest that my questioning and techniques were ‘underhand’ is not only unfair but also untrue. Each person who took part was asked the same questions. Due to requests not to make them public, I am the only person, outside of the lecturers who marked it, an external lecturer and HETAC, to have seen all the answers given. The terms ‘cheerleading’, ‘critiquing’ and ‘archiving’ are well established in critical theory and arose AFTER I had asked the questions, hence why they weren’t referred to directly. Had I come up with them before asking the questions, I would, no doubt, have failed my thesis as you can’t draw conclusions before you actually do the research.
Regarding the specific questions you were asked, eveyone, blogger and professional alike, was given the same questions and given the same opportunity – with no word count or any other constraint on my part – to talk about ‘the most important role of the professional music journalist in Ireland’. Their answers to that question formed one of the central points of my thesis, namely that bloggers saw the role as being about the promotion of new music and music they love, while the professionals saw it as also being about critiquing and highlighting the importance of ‘the event’. Had bloggers talked about critiquing or archiving in their answers, I would have included it.
The simple fact is that my thesis was not a vehicle for me to give my opinions on professional music journalism in Ireland. It was a research project that saw yourself and many others – who know far more about it than I do – to give theirs, and for me to draw conclusions from those opinions. Whether you agree or not with those conclusions is, of course, up to you but I am offended by the accusation that my methods were ‘underhand’. Had that been the case HETAC, my supervisor, the lecturers who marked it – all of whom have access to parts of the thesis that, in fairness, you don’t – would have failed me.
As for the other points you make, well, I thought it was fairly clear that the ‘I prefer their earlier stuff’ headings were sarcastic and a jab at people who think that people who love music are all like that. If that wasn’t clear, you have my unreserved apologies.
Again, I have no issues with you disagreeing with my conclusions, I’d have done something wrong if everyone agreed with them, but I can’t accept you saying that my methods were underhand and I can’t see how you can make that accusation when you haven’t seen all the answers.
Okay, I have an obligation to respond to Steve’s concerns here.
“Under-handed” pertains to the fact that you did not stipulate in the text that the bloggers involved are also journalists. I mean, maybe myself, Darragh and Karl are not recognised primarily as writers in the print music media but the fact is that we do write at length for other sources than our blogs. Yet you had a section on the bloggers and the future etc. of journalism and mentioned the semi-pro, yet neglected to point out that Nialler9 was not the only contributor to fit the mould. I can’t speak for the others but to put it bluntly, I got pretty pissed off to read that I do not qualify as anything more than an amateur cheerleader, despite the fact that my blog is more than a hobby and I generate income by freelance writing of what I think are pretty good interviews and features with a distinctive identity.
As for your lecturers and grading, I’m not insinuating that you did not do the proper research. I’m saying that you manipulated our responses to what appears to be your preconception of bloggers, as if you’d already outlined the form the thesis would take before we’d even answered your questions. It’s easy to fashion summarisations that fit your own opinion of music blogging with selective quotes from the bloggers’ responses. The first section of the thesis states that there has been very little academic research on music journalism, and by default, music blogging, so what’s to say that your lecturers had any expertise in music blogging to begin with? Your thesis doesn’t strike me as offering any new insight to the reasons why people blog independently despite the fact that you had five (or seven bloggers’ to be exact) personal viewpoints. Our sites are all so different that I find it difficult to believe we all waxed lyrical on how *awesome* it is to be able to *champion* NEW music. I have posted my own answers (to the initial questions, not the financial enquiries) and anyone can read and see that there is very little mention about the blogging I do, why, or anything that relates to being occupied with new music and overzealous promotion. When filling those answers I honestly had no indication that they would end up used in the format they ultimately appeared in. There is a stereotype that bloggers are only concerned with the latest trends and fads and you had an opportunity to present a fair representation of why we do this. Instead you chose to label music bloggers in quite a jaded and misleading way with a flimsy title that has no bearing on the spadework that goes into maintaining a decent site. So yeah, I wasn’t happy that you dismissed my motivations and used my own words to feed a cliché that already does more harm than good.
Also, as an aside, you studied at the same college that runs the Hot Press Music Diploma course – hardly likely to be a hotbed of stimulating blog expertise in which any omissions or inaccuracies would be spotted by Irish music blog coinnoisseurs.
To make it easy, I’ll go through what you’ve got wrong one by one.
(In your defence, you’re not playing with a full deck as I am the only person likely to respond to this post with access to every answer submitted).
Why were you and the others defined as bloggers and not a semi-pro. Well that’s easy, it’s right there in chapter one where a semi-pro was defined as “a writer who earns a significant portion of his income from blogging, either as a personal endeavour or for an organisation” – Do you fall into that category? You know you don’t and nor do any of the other bloggers interviewed. Those titles were just a construct, not a comment on the quality of your writing. It’s almost the first thing I said in the thesis so it’s not as if I hid it.
Secondly, and I think this is what frustrates me most about your post and your reply, my thesis never claimed to be about offering ‘new insights into why people blog independently’, rather – and the clue is in the title, which you had when you were answering the questions – it was about the ‘future of professional music journalism in an era of citizen journalism’. I think it’s important to make that clear to your readers. Had my thesis been ‘an examination of citizen journalism in an era when professional journalism is on its knees’ then all the points you make above would be valid. But that’s not what the thesis was about, nor did I ever make that claim.
Finally, your claim that you doubt that all the bloggers talked about how ‘awesome’ promoting music was. I don’t know if you’ve ever written a thesis Naomi, but I had to provide HETAC and the lecturers with every single shred of unedited data I receieved in the interview stage, including recordings, transcripts, emails, the lot. Had I ‘manipulated’ the answers – which I didn’t – to suit a pre-defined concept, the simple fact is that I would have been failed. It doesn’t require an in-depth knowledge of the microworld of Irish music journalism to know if someone is manipulating data or not.
When I had received all the answers – again something that you don’t have access to – it became very clear that there was a clear distinction between what bloggers thought was important and what the established industry professionals thought was important. Bloggers chose to focus on promoting new music and music they loved, the professionals didn’t. It was only at that stage that I actually sat down to right the bloody thing.
The other point that you seem to be making about cliques in blogging etc, I never made that point in my blog, some of the professionals may have made that claim that they doubt the integrity of bloggers but I certainly didn’t and if anyone actually reads the thesis they’ll see that.
Anyway, to finish, I’m proud of my thesis. I worked hard on it and was rewarded with a grade to reflect that work. The fact that you are making claims about the integrity of the thesis without being in full possession of all the facts does annoy me somewhat but hey, it’s a free world, and people are entitled to write and think what they want. It won’t stop me coming back to your blog and it won’t stop me enjoying, as I’ve done for some time, your excellent writing on music.
I’m proud of my blog too Steven and I appreciate you as a reader. Nothing within this article has any bearing on your character or personality but pertains solely to the example of work in which I was quoted. Unfortunately there’s no-one out there grading the blog for me and so I don’t get a first for my work, which means I can do without generalisations like Cheerleading. So far I’ve seen three of the five bloggers’ interview responses and I don’t see anything to back up your assertion that Irish bloggers are fixated on promotion of the new, forsaking criticism or archivism.
I therefore don’t understand how you came to the conclusion that “there was a clear distinction between what bloggers thought was important and what the established industry professionals thought was important” in relation to blogs vs print journalism because you did not go into detail asking bloggers what they personally thought was important in their individual blogs. You asked us what was important about Music Journalism, not blogging. So while it would have been fine to use our responses in regards to the future of professional music journalism, I think it was misleading to use that information to contrast bloggers in a similar light without the same degree of questioning. You say the thesis was not an attempt to offer insight into blogging yet you presented a chapter defining blogs, using specific labels that as far as I can see, were not supported by the answers you were given. I suppose we will have to wait and see if the other bloggers choose to post their responses but the fact is that you were given a great deal of information in regards to music journalism and very little on blogs, so do you not think that the bloggers were unprepared to find their work and responses insubstantially represented when aligned against those of the print journalists?
Where I mentioned that music bloggers are looked upon as a clique, I was not referring to an example in your thesis, but I did draw parallels between the fact that many people think we’re obsessed with the new, which you already stated as a ‘fact’ based on your research and used generalisations such as ‘I saw them back when….”. I’m not worried about the integrity aspersions cast by print journalists on the blogging community as it’s quite clear to me that the professional media crowd have a far greater problem than any bedroom-bound blogger!
I don’t make the bulk of my income as a freelance photojournalist any more, you’re right about that. However I began my music blogging career (after personal blogging for years) as a full professional, hired by Hot Press to write a blog about music while I was also employed by the same company as a photographer. In the time since I left that position I have made regular contributions to a music magazine (which I have now left, to write for a different website but this was not the case at the time of the thesis’ publication) so yes, although times are hard and it has not proved possible to acquire a permanent, well-paying position at a publication, I don’t feel it was necessary to see my work downgraded to that of simply, an enthusiastic supporter.
And that, ladies and gentlemen is the blog post of the year.
I’ll not back up some of the many points you’ve made.
1 – I have never met you in person, nor do I have your phone number. And I don’t think we’re even friends on facebook.
2 – The same applies for every single act I mention on my own website. There is not one musician I would call my friend. I may have been introduced to some here or there, but not one musician sent me a birthday text or knew that my dog recently contracted meningitis (two of the more major things to happen to me in the last week).
3. I consider myself a “music critic”, not a cheerleader. I don’t get my pom-poms out for every new act. Some of them aren’t very good, and I’ve been known to give an album a bad review in the past. This has been uncommon though, why would I waste my own time writing about something I didn’t like and wasting my reader’s time too? If I had an editor who gave me albums to rate and review I would have no qualms about giving an honest critical appraisal. All my opinions are fair and just, with no outside interference, I just have chosen in the past to save everyone’s time by not discussing sub-par records.
There’s a million other points I could make, but you have covered them in such detail already, and with such a forthright argument, that I’ll just say this: bravo Nay McArdle, bravo.
Pingback: Steven O’Rourke’s Thesis. | Those Geese Were Stupefied
Who cares about all your fucking blogs? All Irish bloggers linkbait each other, how dare you mask it by saying ‘oh, we don’t know each other personally’ when in reality you’re all fawning over each other on twitter/facebook. It seems Naomi ticked off being called a ‘cheerleader’ which is an accurate statement. This blog is really just a mouthpiece for ASIWFA/Richter collective bands. Yawn.
Put your claws back in and have a read of this blog before you start dishing out catty comments. You’re way off. There haven’t been any posts about ASIWYFA/Richter bands since they last released something, which is the point……right?
Denise.
It’s my blog that’s the mouthpiece for ASIWYFA/Richter Collective bands. Naomi’s blog is a front for Popical Island.
Get it RIGHT.
I defined myself in the thesis as primarily a psychologist, and a blogger as a hobby, so I am not too taken aback by anything Steven communicated about me in his thesis. I made a point somewhere else, on a blog of Steven’s, that perhaps there was one or two unfair points made somewhere about us (bloggers) having a limited understanding of critical theory say in comparison to professional journalists; this I felt was fair to say, because we have worked/ do work for a number of publications.
I will try and consider the meat on the bones of all this on my own website soon. But I want to make a very very important point in defense of Steven here. I work as a doctor in a field of research that relies heavily on qualitative data, and I would say it is of KEY importance that people’s right to maintain confidentiality of certain information was hugely important in this case, as it would be in any qualitative study. Now that people are putting their answers out in full, there seems to be this push, even pressure, for ‘transparency’ in the case of certain things said in private response to his questions. This should not be the case in research.
I have full trust in Steven’s credibility as a researcher, and in the processes he had to go through relating to ethics. I also think that his argument will never be agreeable to all who read it, because sadly that is one of the flaws of qualitative research that we all have to deal with in the field. For that reason and for that reason alone, I am not going to release a transcript of everything I said to him. It is not good for research.
Darragh
That’s fair enough Darragh, I understand. There’s no pressure to release your answers at all. As I said, I’ve seen three of five (including my own) so I still believe the majority opinion stands. And while it did strike me as weird that none of our contributions other than blog activities were outlined, it was also made out that our blogs forsake criticism almost completely. I don’t think that’s the case.
I think the term “cheerleader” itself is problematic for obvious reasons. Steven mentioned that it was a term used in critical theory – I wouldn’t know, and having spent 4 and a half years in college myself I can honestly say I’ve had enough of academic theory for this life – but Naomi’s reaction is proof enough that it’s a loaded and emotional term and for that reason should be used very carefully, particularly when using named research subjects.
What struck me as odd about the thesis was that, while interesting, it seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing the bloggers own motivations when, as you admitted yourself, the purpose was to find out their opinions on the future of professional journalism. Obviously I’m not your professor so my opinions don’t come from any great knowledge of the situation, but as a stranger reading the thesis for the first time it seemed that part of it was a little off-topic.
I’m sympathetic to Steven in a sense because I recognise you can’t just ask somebody directly if they’re a “cheerleader” or “critic” – I think most people would lean towards critic and few would ever say cheerleader, even if the majority were cheerleaders. But I do think you needed to ask the question more directly to get the quality of answer you needed to make that judgement. In fact, I don’t think you asked the right question at all.
You asked the bloggers why they think other people visit their blog. For me, that doesn’t equate to what those bloggers see as their own ideal role. I don’t know what questions you asked the professional journos, but I reckon if you asked them what attracts people to the Ticket or Hot Press, they’d admit that it’s not because they love music journalism or great writing. With the possible exception of Stuart Clark, who seems to view the role of the music journalist something akin to a prophet, but that’s another discussion…
I don’t mean to be ultra-critical since, as you’ve pointed out, we don’t have access to all of the information but I think you have a duty of care when you attribute quotes to specific bloggers, even if you didn’t originally intend it to be published on t’internets.
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On a general note, I have to disagree with some aspects of Naomi’s post. There is a perception that the blogging scene is a golden circle and I think it’s justified to a point. I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with that, though, as long as it’s played out in public and for the most part I think it is.
“While I agree with Jim Carroll‘s opinion in this instance, why should any writer adhere to rules that make no difference when the sterling example of music on offer is enough to provide an objective example of quality?”
It’d be nice to think that people are going to judge the music purely on its own merits, but in reality people read this (and every other blog) because they’re interested in your opinions, but I think to maintain credibility bloggers need to declare interests more often and, I think, be more critical where the situation demands it. It’s as much about being a rounded person as anything – since your blog is essentially an extension of your personality – and I think it’s what makes blogs like Harmless Noise and Ronan’s among the best around.