Independent newspaper lashes out at independent publishers

This entry was posted on
Monday, July 24th, 2006
at
10:09 am and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.

For some reason the Independent is having a go at bloggers…

The fragrantly-hyphenated Janet Street-Porter kicked things off yesterday with this charming piece:

Janet Street-Porter – Editor-At-Large: Blog off… You don’t want to know what I weigh today (do you?)

The tastiest comments are hidden behind the subscription wall, but I dare to share:

“The web is fast becoming clogged with blogs; the verbal diarrhoea of the under-educated and banal.”

“Blogs are for anoraks who couldn’t get published any other way.”

And the day after Janet Street-Porter assured her readers that blogs contained inconsequential information published by inconsequential people, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown put her hyphen to work to put forward another case; that blogs contained dangerous information published by dangerous people… before dismissing the whole thing as a fad. Of the inconsequential variety, obviously…

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – Hounded by assaults from cyberspace

Yasmin starts out by assuring us that “the internet has already become a coffee shop for paedophiles and violent fantasists,” and follows this wonderful guilt-by-association opener with this charming passage. From her back-passage…

“Where do blog writers and surfers find the time? When do they do the washing, cooking, eating, talking, cuddling, story reading to kids? Do they never help with school homework, go to the theatre, make love, read books, talk to friends, entertain?”

Well, there you have it. I hang out with paedophiles *and* I neglect my kids. Further, I have failed to fulfill certain cultural obligations, and have thus proven myself to be under-educated and banal.

I think I can be excused for thinking there’s something coordinated going on here.

Who exactly decided that our cages needed rattling? And why?








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