THE IRVINGS SPEAKS OUT LOUD AND CLEAR AGAINST BLOGGERS!!!!!!

irving3, originally uploaded by Oldmaison.

This afternoon a young girl appraoched me asking me if I saw the article in the HERE paper about Bloggers???


She was surprised when I told her that I don't bother reading the HERE since the Irvings bought them out last year.

She was surprised once I told her the Irvings were the owners!!!!

Read this one---

The revolution that never came
Doesn’t look like media will be wiped out by blogs anytime soon

There was and perhaps still is a fear among those in the newspaper industry that one day they will wake up and newspapers as we know them will simply no longer be viable or marketable products. They will be replaced and depending upon whom you ask, are being replaced, by Web blogs and news Web sites. The problem with this is that this revolution is supposed to be well underway.

News Web sites have actually become products of newspapers themselves, providing subscribers with extra services while often providing the newspaper with an added revenue source. So, the question remains, what happened to the 'Blog Revolution'?

Wasn't there supposed to be a total reworking of how citizens communicate ideas, especially in the realm of political thought and _expression? Wasn't the ideal that almost everyone would have their own blogs and share their particular insights with those wanting to and capable of finding their sites? Face-to-face interaction could very well cease to exist and the nerds and the recluse about the world kept telling us that this was the best thing that could happen to mainstream media.

So, what's happening out there? In New Brunswick...nothing. It may be better to say, 'very little' rather than nothing at all. As far as political blogs go, the Web site BlogsCanada.ca lists only three based out of this province. The last entry in one was on April 13, 2005 and the last entry in another was a year before that!

There is only one active political blog in New Brunswick, and truth be told, it's not that great.

However, its longevity alone tends to suggest (at the very least) that it has a loyal following or its administrator has a lot of time on his hands and doesn't discourage easily. It is very likely the latter, as comments to his posts are few and far between.

Blogs based out of the larger Canadian cities tend to be more stimulating. There are perhaps 20 or so of these and visiting one often allows you links to the others. A person could probably get a list of the worthwhile blogs in Canada by visiting three and taking note of the links offered from them.

National Post columnist and blogger Adam Radwanski admits that "of the many of thousand of blogs out there, the majority of them are by people you wouldn't listen to if they were talking to your face." He adds that the better ones are in fact "diamonds in the rough".

Some sites like CommentsPlease even allow the public to respond to what is written by a number of these bloggers. At least it did until recently, shutting down (temporarily?) due to the inability of people to basically just tell the truth. The site issued a statement saying quite plainly that the administrator does "not have the time or inclination to check for increasing libellous material," adding that the entire site is in "jeopardy".

While following a response thread, one quickly notices the responses tend to lose relevancy after about dozen and even some of those are just plain rude or worse. After that they go completely downhill. Radwanski adds that it "amounts to a place where people with way too much time on their hands can whittle away their days insulting other people with too much time on their hands." "A lot of it is very angry and uninformed," says Warren Kinsella of www.warrenkinsella.com.

"While a lot of blogs are indeed useful and positive, many have become repositories of anger and sometimes hate. It is very disappointing." Radwanski compares a lot of what appears in blogs to what appears on talk radio, "rather than intelligent analysis, it amounts to everyone trying desperately to be outrageous in hope of attention." He also says that he sees this style becoming increasingly apparent in print media.

What about the ideal? Wasn't the 'Blog Revolution' supposed to allow for the free _expression of ideas and comment? What about all the promises?

Radwanski doesn't believe it's so much a revolution, but simply "amounts to more options than you'd have if the blogosphere didn't exist." Kinsella suggests, "bloggers have believed too much of their own hype and part of that is believing (without explicitly saying) that they are above the law. They are not." In the case of threats of litigation between some bloggers and actual damages sought being a testimony of the failure of this medium, Kinsella, a lawyer himself (as well as author, National Post columnist, political consultant/advisor and punk rocker) states that is not the case. Libel is libel, and "in the immediate and global context of blog publishing" it just shouldn't be allowed, plain and simple.

So, should blogs begin to be run more like newspapers, with editors who actually edit and greater accountability for what appears on their pages? Antonia Zerbisias, a columnist with the Toronto Star and blogger of Azeric says "No and no.They wouldn't be blogs then." Kinsella doesn't necessarily agree, which is nothing new between these two. "Bloggers deserve and need editors," says Kinsella, adding that bloggers enjoy criticizing mainstream media, "but they shriek mightily whenever subjected to the same scrutiny. They like to play the game, as it were, but they do not want to be subject to the same rules." His colleague at the National Post agrees, saying "while there are plenty of quibbles to be had with editors, removing them from the equation means eliminating quality control." All three bloggers do agree on one point; the need for a code of ethics, in some form or another, within the genre.

Kinsella makes the point that bloggers "certainly seem to insist that others in the mainstream media need and deserve" ethical codes. But Zerbisias asks, "who would decide?" The CommentsPlease site is currently experiencing this dilemma. They are looking into a registration process to curb impersonations, and very likely protect itself against legal action in the future before going back online.

The reason the 'Blog Revolution' never took place is because the movement peaked early.

Demands for accountability and ethical writing practices infiltrated the blogger community and with justifiable reasons. The future being faced now by bloggers is whether they will provide a quality product in their own writings or will they become responsible editors to Internet equivalents of letters to the editor forums. The talented have already begun to rise to the top, the less so become discouraged by lack of hits or the amount of time required to keep their blogs up and running while free of questionable sometimes even illegal content.

The wild west of the media is slowly being tamed. Though Kinsella may not be in complete agreement with that statement he does say "being on a communications frontier does not mean one does not owe one's readers some good grammar, spelling and truth."