One of the first items of business, once the government gets effective control of the Senate (or perhaps earlier) will be the full privatisation of Telstra, ending nearly a decade in the limbo of part-privatisation. Having argued repeatedly that partial privatisation is the worst of all possible worlds and with Labor having dumped my (and Lindsay Tanner’s) preferred option of renationalisation and divestiture, I can’t really complain about this. However, the privatisation process will show some of the reasons why privatising Telstra is a bad idea[1].
Read More »
Category: Metablogging
A blog newsdaily ?
One obvious consequence of the government’s victory and effective control of the Senate will be the repeal of restrictions on media ownership, with the likely consequence of a takeover of the Fairfax papers by one of our great magnates, or perhaps by a foreign buyer[1]. There may also be a renewed attempt to punish the ABC, and even if there is not, the organisation will certainly be cowed. All up, the government is likely to enjoy a pretty supportive mass media.
In this context, it’s not surprising that Ken Parish should be thinking about the role of blogs as a source of balance. Ken says
the blogosphere (along with independent organs like Crikey) might well become a critical and lonely source of independent political analysis and opinion.
And whether the blogosphere rises to that challenge might depend in part on whether at least some blogs manage to evolve beyond the current norm of self-indulgent partisan shrillness and develop something resembling traditional broadsheet media standards of journalistic rigor and objectivity in presenting the facts, together with balanced presentation of a wide range of opinions.
The reference to broadsheets raises for me the question: could a blog-based competitor for the quality dailies be feasible, and if so how? I suspect the answer is “No”, but we mind find out something useful by thinking about it
Read More »
Blog awareness
While I was thinking about the role of blogs, I came across an observation (which I can’t locate again), that many Internet users may read blogs from time to time but don’t distinguish them from other kinds of websites. This was certainly true for me – it was only after I started blogging that I realised that kausfiles and Brad DeLong’s Semi Daily Journal, which I had visited quite a few times, were blogs and (at least in Brad’s case) part of a much larger blogosphere.
The experience of reading these sites is different for me as a result. I wonder if others have had similar experiences? And I’d be interested to hear about the relationship, if any, between the way in which people find their way around the Internet and the way that they use and interpret the sites they visit. For example, does a site reached through a portal appear different from the same site found through Google?
Read More »
How big is the blogosphere ?
And why should we care? I’ll leave this question for later and take a look at some numbers
There have been quite a few attempts to measure the growth of blogging. As this site devoted to the topic notes, Technorati passed its 4 millionth blog a week ago. Both Blogger and Livejournal claim over 1.5 million users, and a broadly similar estimate can be obtained if we take this Pew Study from 2003 and make the reasonable assumption that numbers are doubling annually.
But these are almost certainly overestimates.
Read More »
Where is the grown-up right ?
In thinking about the likely role of bloggers in the forthcoming election, I thought I’d start by looking at the listing of Oz political bloggers put up by Ken Parish, which is about the most comprehensive there is. What’s immediately apparent is the almost complete absence of any serious contribution from supporters of the Liberals.
Read More »
New on the website
I’ve been a bit slack about updating the website where I keep all my articles, working papers and so on. One reason is that I’ve been working on a new site for the research group I’ve been setting up as part of my Federation Fellowship (design and organisation suggestions most welcome).
In any case, I’ve just put up about six months’ worth of opinion pieces from the Fin, which you can read here Feel free to comment!
Timing
The continuing speculation about the date of the Federal election, and the continuous state of semi-campaign, is getting really annoying. I’ve never been a fan of four year terms – the arguments in favour of them are generally anti-democratic, based on the idea that the further voters are kept away from policy, the better – but I’d happily accept a four-year term as long as it was fixed. While a four year term reduces accountability, the fixed term reduces the power of the Prime Minister, which is a good thing.
As regards the date, I think it would be really silly to run a campaign during the Olympics and Grand Final Season. If Howard tries this, I think (and hope) he will be punished for it by the voters.
If we rule out that option, our campaign will coincide with that in the US. This leads me to the suggestion that we could make a more informed choice if our election is held after the American election[1]. If Bush gets back in, that’s a significant argument in favour of re-electing Howard – relations between a Bush Administration and a Latham government are unlikely to be warm. If Bush loses, the credibility of Howard’s foreign policy is severely undermined.
fn1. Theirs is Melbourne Cup Day, first Tuesday in November, except when that falls on November 1 (the rule is “first Tuesday after first Monday“). Holding elections on a workday is one of the many ways in which the world’s leading democracy discourages voting.
Free riding
Ken Parish has reorganised his blogroll with a rough classification of ideological categories. If you hover your cursor over a blogger’s name, you’ll get a popup description. Unfortunately I don’t know how to link or cut and paste it, but he’s very positive about the comment threads here “sometimes better than the posts”, and I’m happy to agree with him.
Ken’s comprehensive list, along with that of Tim Dunlop leaves me free to be both slacker and choosier with my blogroll. Generally, I’ll link to any Australian political blogger who links to me (if they remind me and when I get around to it), but I feel free to make arbitrary exceptions to this rule.
The Google circle
I found this mildly snarky piece from Alan Wood in today’s Oz
Google’s worth is not only preoccupying Wall Street advisers and investors, but has generated a great volume of argument on the web itself, which can of course be tracked by using Google. One of the first into the fray was Australian economist John Quiggin, described on his own website as “more intelligent than Britney Spears”.
A popular market guess of the value of Google’s equity is $US20 billion ($28 billion) to $US25 billion, with more recent estimates of $US30 billion or more. Quiggin, who is in fact quite bright, said he couldn’t draw a plausible earnings path that would yield a present value of $US25 billion at any reasonable discount rate.
But what’s really interesting is that I didn’t have to look for the article. It was sent to me by Google news alerts. As I said in the original discussion, I use Google all the time, but unless text ads have a subliminal effect for which Google is being paid, I’ve never contributed a penny to its revenues, and quite possibly never will.” This implies that the social value of Google is more than its market value.
Read it first in blogs
Today’s SMH reprints a piece from the NYT on the impact of the Free Trade Agreement on pharmaceuticals. The Ozplogosphere was all over this a couple of days ago.
John Quiggin 