Interesting that Kathryn Ryan from Nine to Noon interviewed Lord Norton of Louth on Friday’s programme about the UK Lords of the Blog, which is what it says; a blog consisting of a bunch of Lords.
Red Alert posted on the Lords of the Blog a few weeks ago. Lord Norton is a prolific blogger with around 410 posts. He’s one of a few Lords who post on the site.
But what’s interesting is that Radio NZ chose to ignore the homegrown political blog, Red Alert, which exists under its very nose and is generating a lot of comment and discussion. 34 our of 43 Labour MPs, many who post regularly (some more than others).
In the interview with Lord Norton, Kathryn Ryan didn’t even mention Red Alert. I got a tip off that Radio NZ was doing the interview, so I guessed they knew about us.
Maybe I was mistaken. Because I choose to be charitable, I’ve made sure I’ve alerted them to this post so they now do know about us.
Diddums.
There is an interesting range of approaches from within the MSM. Some have Red Alert on a regular checking system and have got a few breaks from it – others still expect us to call or visit them to tell them about a new story.
I guess like us they will adapt or die.
Or maybe, they are just not that into you.
Trevor
I believe that there will be a level of elitism displayed by traditional content producers like Radio NZ for quite some time. It will take a while for the old guard to die off and a new group of producers to develop who recognize that the general news channel is dying and that specialist media (such as Red Alert) are increasingly important.
It has been a very long time since any individual was able to stay up to date with even a tiny fraction of the events that occur each day. Traditional media enjoyed a gatekeeper role choosing what we knew about. Blogs like this one have bypassed that gate.
Bryan
You know that cant do everything!!.
But they will have a never ending interviews about some author we have never heard of pushing a book no one reads.
Its seems that they seem to be plugged into international public radio ’system’ as fillers for airtime, yet have reporters sitting through every murder trial, duplicating the tabloid/cable news of other outlets.
Aw, send them a basket of mini muffins at Christmas, with a card from Red Alert. I do think this blog deserved a mention, but give it time.
Maybe you could bake the mini muffins Spud?
LOL – okay it’s a deal!
While I think Red Alert is an excellent initiative by Labour, I can see why Kathryn Ryan didn’t see it as that relevant to the discussion with Lord Norton.
The Lords of the Blog site is non-partisan. Most of the posts are education and informative. Sometimes they are on a partisan issue, but the overall tone of the blog is very different to other UK blogs such as Guido Fawkes, Labour List, Iain Dale etc.
Red Alert is a highly partisan blog (and nothing wrong with that) which is primarily there to drive the message of the Labour Party. The vast majority of the posts are attacking the Government of the Day (and nothing wrong with that – that is the job of the Opposition). It is not that different from many of the other partisan blogs out there, except it is of a much higher quality than most, and of course is staffed by MPs only.
Again I am a fan of Red Alert, and think it reflects well on Labour so many MPs are blogging. Allowing direct interaction with the public is highly commendable. But that doesn’t change the fact it is a partisan blog, rather than the more educational/information nature of Lords of the Blog.
@ David. Always good to hear your views David. There’s no doubt that Red Alert is partisan. That wasn’t the point. And I was pleased Radio NZ had picked up on the Lords of the Blog story. It was the lack of juxtaposition with a local (and unique) political blog that caught my attention (and raised my hackles, being honest).
Oh and being partisan doesn’t mean we don’t have education/information role as well as an opinion -based role. I think many fo the posts on social media trends and open source issues fall into this category.