Blog eat blog

Here's another for you - sadly. This was commissioned by Ros Taylor at Comment is Free before they said no (censorship? I wish), and prompted by the news that GMG had closed its northwest regional offices. The locals hit the roof, publishing an open letter in the Guardian criticising the bosses. Posters went up around the building asking: 'Which organisation awards exective bonuses while simultaneously cutting 150 jobs in its regional offices?' The answer: 'Yours'.

On top of that, it's a blog of a newspaper article about blogs saying that blogs are better than newspapers - is that a first?

Don't write off the bloggers

As debate surrounding the GMG board’s decision to recall its satellite north-west titles to central Manchester intensifies, it's important not to let righteous fury over job losses obscure several wider truths about the mismatch between printed and online media. Properly harnessed, the internet is more suitable for news distribution than the traditional media on almost every count. Shutdowns to fund the stuttering nationals are a shame for local journalists and readers alike, because regional newsrooms are the only places where a face-to-face contact with the target audience is still absolutely pivotal. That said, I don't believe that the lost titles are necessarily irreplacable or even (despite the view expressed in the Guardian's editorial last week) that they will take very long to replace.

A year ago last month, the BBC's Manchester Blog Project drew to a dignified close, having made minor stars of several writers and contributed hugely to the growth of a now-prolific blogging community. As a model for the inclusion of reader-generated content by a mainstream media organisation, the experiment was quietly revolutionary. Two coordinating journalists agreed to follow a select pool of writers – “one or two participants in each each of the ten boroughs of Manchester” – writing on pre-established third-party blogs; periodically, they would swoop to gather relevant activity into summary posts bristling with hyperlinks. In return, the affiliated bloggers benefited from bespoke tutorials, staff mentoring and, of course, the massive surges in traffic which followed a mention on the mother blog.

So far, so what? Well - as news corporations everywhere curl up to protect themselves, they leave an information vacuum into which a generation of citizen journalists might feasibly step. With Manchester’s boroughs starved of real local coverage, my guess is that this online community could be about to re-emerge with their old Beeb-issue weaponry. It makes sense. When the GMG closures were announced, Jenny Maddox of the NUJ said: “Places like Rochdale, Stockport and Salford are losing the distinct voice they were given by their locally based papers.” The qualities that are most crucial, according to these desperate, cliff-edge laments – distinctive, localised, democratic – are precisely the ones that bloggers possesses in abundance. Readers in the north west who find themselves suddenly distrusting their weekly generic Arts/Ents pullout wrapped in region-specific PR rewrites could do worse than look to the Manchizzle or The Marple Leaf, which both perform a 'collect' service for local writing, events and information. And if the model works in Manchester, there's no reason it can’t work elsewhere. It’s already reached the Isle of Wight.

Newsblog networks, including commentary, reviews, listings and local interest stories written by amateur journalists – say, “one or two participants from each of the ten boroughs of Manchester” – would be greener, quicker to adapt to criticism and more likely to deal with residents' real concerns. The web’s informal nature might even suit local journalism better. Unlike the printed news-sheet, the blogpost is not jealous: gossipy and hyperactive, it thrives through its relationship with other blogs, choosing not to hide – as newspapers sometimes do – the fact that it is engaged in a reciprocal give-and-take with a variety of other sources. On one hand, it is postmodern. On the other, it embodies the oldest information network known to local communities: word of mouth. “Basically”, wrote the MBP's coordinators in their signing-off post, “we did what bloggers do through their blogs and comments and links - we had a conversation.”

Newspapers, which once facilitated and amplified public conversation, now run the risk of being drowned out by the web's million babbling voices – especially if their talk is all leftwing. Raymond Williams wasn't the first to point out that the political skew to the right in the mainstream British press is entirely logical. Real revolutionary voices struggle to find an outlet in print because, simply put, no intelligent profit-seeking corporation wants to advertise to those who are sceptical about capitalism. Since blogging rarely pays, compromising oneself is rarely a problem: in fact, the blogosphere represents the only sustainable arena for local and national hard-left reportage precisely because it's the place where comment, and speech, are free.

Over on the Organ Grinder Blog, Sarah Philips asks: “Are there any sites out there already successfully nurturing a sense of community?” The answer is yes. Sad though it is, readers in places such as Rochdale, Stockport and Salford may soon not need “locally based papers” to give them the “distinct voice” they crave. With unparalleled local knowledge, a bit of borrowed editorial savvy and a sophisticated information network already in existence, the bloggers of Greater Manchester might be about to prove a harsh business decision on the part of GMG also a foolish one. They could even change things for the better.