Don’t read this, read that
A recently submitted comment on an old post, makes a valid point. It’s in response to my repetitive and transparently self-serving requests for evidence that people read this blog:
‘Matthew, ten people want you to keep on blogging. Please employ a cost-benefit analysis. R’
The comment (leading me immediately to suspect anyone whose name begins with the letter ‘R’) panders both to my unquenchable thirst for self-deprecation and encourages me to spend less time posting. (See what you’ve done, ‘R’ – bet you feel pretty low now?)
Fortunately, I can kill two birds with one stone. Towards the back end of last year, The Times ran a couple of articles by me in their ’4th plinth’ (as I call it) commentary slot. I also got invited to some great breakfasts to coincide with the publication of the newspaper’s Eureka supplement. At last, I thought, my ambition to be a regular columnist is about to be fulfilled. Sadly, the new dawn turned out to be a flash in the pan. Since then, I’ve sent in loads of ideas, and even a couple of full columns, with no joy.
So, human nature being what it is, you would expect me to read The Times comment pages with a jaundiced eye – ‘how can they reject me and print this rubbish?’ But I am bigger than that, oh yes, and being big is made very easy today when there are four brilliant pieces:
Duncan Bannatyne, urging British entrepreneurs to invest in Haiti;
Richard Kemp, on why we should feel positive and determined in the face of bin Laden’s latest claims;
David Aaronovitch, writing about the Edlington case with his usual mixture of common sense and scathing wit; and
Rachel Sylvester on Chilcot, making me feel (a little) better about my old boss. (Accompanied, for balance, by a clever and cruel cartoon.)
The fact is I could write articles till the cows came home, made themselves a light supper and settled back to watch Newsnight (or should that be ‘Moosnight’?) and still not match any of these.
I guess I’ll have to stick to the quality-assurance-free zone that is my blog. Sorry ‘R’!
Comments
8 Comments on Don’t read this, read that
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G on
Tue, 26th Jan 2010 7:14 pm
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Betapolitics on
Wed, 27th Jan 2010 9:09 am
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Paul Hebden on
Wed, 27th Jan 2010 10:42 am
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Ian Leslie on
Wed, 27th Jan 2010 12:05 pm
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Susmita on
Wed, 27th Jan 2010 1:03 pm
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Livy on
Wed, 27th Jan 2010 1:13 pm
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Michael on
Wed, 27th Jan 2010 2:19 pm
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Ben Dean on
Mon, 1st Feb 2010 7:05 pm
Good. Keep it coming.
It is better that your pearls of wisdom are on this blog, rather than being behind a pay-wall. Keep ideas free. That way they have a better chance of multiplying. (Having said all that, I can see the benefit of being paid and having access to a mass media’s inbuilt audience. But this mass audience won’t exist for much longer)
Keep-up the good, and interesting work. I’m sure I’m not the only person who enjoys regularly reading this blog.
Matthew,
Perhaps you should concentrate on the Today Programme, they clearly needed someone to comment on a story about a report by the Better Government Initiative this morning at 7.30am.
Among the report’s findings is the suggestion that the 24-hour news agenda might influence polticians to make poor decisions.
Cue: news item between a Today Programme journalist and Today Programme presenter about civil servants being out of touch for wanting to close the lid on 24-hour news.
The point the BGI report makes is that we might want to consider the impact 24-hour news has on the quality of decision making (a dodgy dossier to feed a voracious news appetite might be a cliched but transparent example of this) not that 24-hour news should be abolished.
Is it the 24-hour news agenda itself that results in a situation in which journalists – starved of contacts willing to appear on the Today Programme at 7.30am – resort to interviewing each other?
It’s not entirely clear to me whether R’s comment was meant as an encouragement to blog more, or less. Blogging one or two posts a day is an extremely low cost activity, in terms of money and time. So, even if we make the extremely conservative estimate that only ten people want you to continue blogging (and so are presumably ready to offer feedback etc, which counts as a further benefit over and above others, like publicity for the RSA, the chance for you to formulate your own thoughts in writing etc) then the cost-benefit proposition probably works out in favour of continuing the blog, no?
Any chance of cows making a light supper on “Animate?”
The Secret Lives of Married Men. “Wives, here is a fact you definitely don’t want to know about your husband: he wants to shag your best friend. There’s nothing personal about this. In fact, in a strange way, he means it as a compliment.”
“Since then, I’ve sent in loads of ideas, and even a couple of full columns, with no joy. ”
Yes, I have had the same crushing feeling of disappointment with my recent attempts to get onto the letters page of the Guardian.
Keep on with the self-deprecating humour please Matthew.
Matthew
Building on the question of the value of your blog – it strikes me that two measurable aims of blogs are that they are read and that they encourage debate (for which comments make a good proxy). With this in mind how about a little comparative analysis?
Im sure your IT people can give you figures on how many unique hits your blog gets per month and how many people make comments per month. You could then ask a few other bloggers like Nick Robinson, Danny Finklestein etc to share their blog figures and publish the results. The likes of Robinson’s blog will undoubtedly have more hits and comments but is his ratio of hits to comments as high? These figures alone will not be enough to evaluate the value of your blog but at the very least it might be quite interesting.
The analysis has the risk of denting your pride but on the up side it may give some transparency to any doubtful RSA fellows as to how you spend your time!
Ben
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
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