India Uncut
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Sunday, November 06, 2005
Bring on the outrage
"If you steal from us we will cut off your hands," goes the excellent headline from a Sepia Mutiny post. Abhi is upset that DNA filched content off the fine blog he writes for, and rightly so.
Let me tell you why I like Abhi's headline -- it expresses outrage. Over the months, I have seen Indian bloggers' outrage at MSM behaviour change into apathy, as we have realised that the MSM giants couldn't care less about us little flies, and that we don't yet have the kind of readership we'd need to make a difference. (By my estimate, around 7000 readers every day for Sepia Mutiny and half that much for Kiruba Shankar and India Uncut, and less for most others. Negligible, even in an Indian context, compared to the influence US bloggers wield.)
So we've sort of given up. We see plagiarism, lazy journalism and all kinds of ethical transgressions from MSM (though this is the first such I have encountered in DNA, which is otherwise a promising paper), and while we rant about it once in a while, we let it pass. It has become a fact of life for us, like corrupt politicians and extreme poverty. We block it out.
Well, maybe there is something we can do about it. That's the spirit with Peter Griffin has just launched We The Media, a blog authored by journalists who blog, who have seen MSM from the inside, and can share their perspectives on it. Peter describes it in his first post, as a "critical, yet balanced view from people who understand both sides of the story. An open forum, of the media, by the media, for the media."
Will anybody listen? Wait and see.
Cross-posted, with some changes, on We The Media.
Let me tell you why I like Abhi's headline -- it expresses outrage. Over the months, I have seen Indian bloggers' outrage at MSM behaviour change into apathy, as we have realised that the MSM giants couldn't care less about us little flies, and that we don't yet have the kind of readership we'd need to make a difference. (By my estimate, around 7000 readers every day for Sepia Mutiny and half that much for Kiruba Shankar and India Uncut, and less for most others. Negligible, even in an Indian context, compared to the influence US bloggers wield.)
So we've sort of given up. We see plagiarism, lazy journalism and all kinds of ethical transgressions from MSM (though this is the first such I have encountered in DNA, which is otherwise a promising paper), and while we rant about it once in a while, we let it pass. It has become a fact of life for us, like corrupt politicians and extreme poverty. We block it out.
Well, maybe there is something we can do about it. That's the spirit with Peter Griffin has just launched We The Media, a blog authored by journalists who blog, who have seen MSM from the inside, and can share their perspectives on it. Peter describes it in his first post, as a "critical, yet balanced view from people who understand both sides of the story. An open forum, of the media, by the media, for the media."
Will anybody listen? Wait and see.
Cross-posted, with some changes, on We The Media.
