March 4th, 2008
Crime Always Pays… so do it with comments
Another blog that should have been on the Best Arts & Culture shortlist is Declan Burke’s excellent
Crime Always Pays. A journalist who has had two crime novels published, Declan must have a cache of typing monkeys holed up in the attic given the frequency of his posts. There are reviews, author Q&As and features - many written by other established writers contributing to the blog.
Today he’s wondering if what many bloggers often wonder: what am I doing wrong? We’ve all been there. You meet someone who tells you they’ve been reading your blog for years, and yet they’ve never left you a single comment. Declan, we feel your pain. A good place to start over on CAP is his excellent take on Twenty Major’s book, how it’s been reviewed and bloggers as published writers. The same post is also one of the few to respond to Kathy Foley’s article in the Sunday Times, which bloggers have been eerily quiet about.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Ahhhhh.
Twenty had left a cryptic parting shot at the end of his post yesterday. Now I get it. Hadn’t seen that article until now.
To be fair I think she has a few points about many of the Irish blogs out there (and I’m honest to admit that I’ll include my own in that collective) that lack cohesion and focus.
Perhaps it’s a matter of people ‘fining their voice’ as it were; before someone honed their writing skill until it was accepted by a publication, but now the immediacy of the internet allows anything to go out instantly.
I think it’s worth remembering that infrastructurally the US is ahead of Ireland - what’s to say that given time we’ll catch up in terms of the quality of the American blog?
March 4th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I should point out that final line wasn’t about that article. Something else entirely.
I just think it was a lazy observation - of course Irish blogs aren’t going to have the reach or influence of the big American blogs. That’s just common sense.
On the other hand it doesn’t go any way to acknowledge the steps forward that the blogging community has made over the last couple of years. The attendance at the IBAs on the other night testament to how many more people are blogging - and a good number of the people there weren’t bloggers at all. They were readers and commenters who were interested enough to come along.
Irish Election did fantastic stuff last year for the general election, there are countless blogs who are catering for every kind of audience and whose writing is compares more than favourably with the ‘big’ blogs.
Bloggers with book deals is a big step forward as well - expect some more to be announced this year too. No problem whatsoever that she didn’t like mine, it’s not for everyone and I’d be the first to accept that. But blogs are getting better, influence of blogs is growing but we are a small country and that’s reflected in the blog community too.
I just thought it was terribly dismissive and the point she was trying to make could have been made better and more constructively.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Crikey - I’d better comment here, hadn’t I? Kathy Foley’s piece - I think she had some good things to say, but they got buried in the rush to write off Irish blogging. Re: Twenty’s book - anyone with even a passing notion of what Twenty Major blogs about shouldn’t have been expecting Remembrance of Times Past. Given that he was commissioned on the strength of his blog, and the blog’s popularity, doesn’t it make sense that he would write a novel in the same style and tone? Cheers, Dec
March 4th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
And not every blog is written to change the world, far from it. Some bloggers just write for the sheer bloody craic of it……and so that they can get badges made too……
March 4th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Oh dear me, I always read your blog so now I am saying ‘hello’ and when I’m less bothered about my ’stalkieness’ (not sure if that is a word) I’ll leave a proper comment.
March 4th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
fair play, Sinead. I was there on Saturday night as a complete novice to the scene, sllghtly surprised by the extent of the comraderie both on and off stage (although admittedly it made for a great night) and then read Kathy’s article on Sunday (and the paltry, dry coverage of the awards in the Times on Monday).
So why aren’t the heavy-weight critics and literary/business figures blogging in Ireland? Forget about progress in Ireland, surely this is a global phenomenon after all.
March 6th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Foley was dead right. Irish blogs are generally very poor quality (and full of comments by other bloggers back-slapping each other with compliments).
Foley, on the other hand, is one of the few professional writers who blog and who is good enough to have been hired to write by an newspaper (and I am deliberately not counting the many freelance hacks who eek out a living and frequently turn up on The View but who can’t get a staff job at a paper).
March 6th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Gosh Sean, imagine I had actually criticised Kathy (I didn’t). There were a lot of valid points in her piece. But thanks for stopping by.
Us lowly freelancers know that the Holy Grail of journalism is a staff job. Most of us grubby types spend much of my time lighting candles and saying novenas in the hope that one day a real newspaper will deign to take us on.
Except that some of us regularly turn down those real journalism jobs you speak of. Who wants 9-5 hours, sick pay, holiday pay and churning out one column a week when you can work 8am-midnight, on several reviews, a column, features for various newspapers and magazines and find time for a bit of radio or TV? Must work on motivating myself more.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:13 am
I am deliberately not counting the many freelance hacks who eek out a living and frequently turn up on The View but who can’t get a staff job at a paper
Do you think you could possibly be any more condescending?
March 6th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Sean, tad bitter there eh? Smells of failed “freelance hack” to me…
Don’t knock others just cause you couldn’t make it buddy…
March 6th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Methinks Sean P.Brady doth protest too much!
Why is being hired by a newspaper a hallmark of “good” writing? Many of my colleagues would be more eloquent and articulate than most journalists, it is just not their vocation to do it for a living.
March 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Oh my God! Sean P Brady has spoken! I am not quaking in my slippers here.
Sinead, you and me, we’re not staff writers so - oh sweet suffering, the shame, the shame - we’re not real journalists! And there we were thinking that we were because we wrote for various newspapers, magazines and publications. The shame, the shame, the shame….. How can we live with it? How can you look your child in the eye and say ’son, I am a fraud, I have failed you and your future children and your future children’s children’
I have not got involved in this debate because I find it the equivalent of picking fluff from my belly and examining it closely.
I am also Very Busy dealing with gobshites and mischief-makers on my blog, writing features and finishing reviews. I do intend to enter the debate at some stage in the coming days, but I promise I will send bell-ringers and a choir of scabby lepers ahead of me to warn of my impending arrival. Promise. “Blogger coming, unclean, unclean”
March 6th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Whoa…that was unnecessary, to say the least. I’m all for having people rush to my defence, but not in that manner. As it happens, I’m also a freelancer (and I’ve never even been invited to appear on The View!).
Mind you if there is a job going where I’d get those cushty hours and holiday pay for doing one column a week, I’d happily take it.
And 8am to midnight? Huh, slacker. Sleep is for wimps.
March 6th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Sean P. Brady, you’re a piece of work. You seem to think that there is some sort of vetting going on and only the most talented will get a permanent job in a newspaper and think that bloggers are just pathetic creatures trying to get attention from mainstream publishers. You got it the wrong way round entirely. People who write blogs like the freedom too much. When they write they don’t have to worry about whether an editor would find it acceptable or not. They write, take photos, publish them, and its done. Then the next day they do the same and move on. Blogging is not journalism.
But regarding the Kathy Foley piece I find it curious that this is yet another negative article about Irish blogs in the press. The complaint regularly seems to be the lack of quality and how newspaper journalism is so much better. Does it have anything to do with the fact that blogging is getting more popular and that finally broadband is starting to become more widespread in Ireland. If you look at the articles and stories which have been published in the Irish Times, RTE, Newstalk, the Dubliner, and now the Sunday Times it would suggest that they trying to tell their readership not to read Irish blogs, because they’re crap. Instead keeping reading our stuff, we’re professional.
But what all these articles have missed is what could be seen at the Irish Blog Awards on Saturday, and Twenty Major is exactly right. It’s the diversity of people writing blogs that matters. I was impressed this year with the acceptance speeches, with Grandmar and Granddad – that was a brilliant moment and represented perfectly what blog are about. Ordinary people talking about their lives in a funny way and getting considerable audiences reading it. Gingerpixel said that the only reason she took out her camera is to take photos on her blog, and she was up against serious competition in the photoblog category. Suzy Byrne mentioned how blogs have really coming on, with a well spring of blogs dealing with a whole range of topics and specialist interests.
To suggest that there is not one or two blogs that are really getting attention like American blogs is absurd and ignores, purposefully, what is really going on.
I wonder if some well established journalist would be interested in writing an article in, lets say, the Irish Times, celebrating this diversity of voices that simply do not appear, in their own terms, in the mainstream media. You know, something positive for a change. Hint, hint Sinead
March 6th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Ian - who’d be a journalist? Not a lot of people I can tell you…
Jim - a lot of people assume you’re a staffer don’t they? I’m considering therapy for my “freelance hack” complex.
Kathy, you’re not responsible for who defends you and why, but I appreciate you saying that. A lot of your points in the article are valid, while I disagreed with others.
BTW, the “one column a week” wasn’t about you, it was a generic reference. And when you think about it, you being called a staffer too is yet another massive assumption Sean made.
March 6th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Oh you’re grand, I wasn’t taking it personally.
And surely Jim had better get a second choir of lepers to chorus, “Freelance hack! Freelance hack!”. Y’know, just in case people want to usher the childers indoors before he appears.
March 6th, 2008 at 10:45 am
sinead - as you know, people assume a lot about me…..
kathy - And surely Jim had better get a second choir of lepers to chorus, “Freelance hack! Freelance hack!”. Y’know, just in case people want to usher the childers indoors before he appears.
Do you really think a freelance hack can afford TWO choirs? Frank Fitzgibbon must be paying you REALLY well
March 6th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Oh yes. I’ve three choirs. And not a leper between ‘em.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I bet John Waters has four choirs, though, all singing “They Cant Stop The Spring”
March 6th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Busy dealing with gobshites and mischief-makers on my blog
Bright coloured petals attract bees to flower.
March 6th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Sinead,
You’re right - of the top of my head I can think of four journalists who’ve been ordained, but not too many clergy who have become journalists.
It wasn’t meant as a dig against journalists, but as a rejoinder to Mr Brady’s implication that the only people who can write are those who are paid to do so.
March 6th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I think Sean Brady should be commended for pointing out that freelance hacks ‘eek’ out a living, rather than ‘eke’ one out. Maybe it’s because I’m rubbish at it (I can’t even get on The View, fer Chrissakes), but I tend to do a lot of eeking when the monthly bills arrive. Cheers, Dec
March 6th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
PS - While I think Kathy Foley was wrong to make like-for-like comparisons between Irish and American blogospheres, she had a lot of valid points to make about the general quality of Irish blogs. And debate is always healthy. Cheers, Dec
March 6th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Bright coloured petals attract bees to flower.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain
March 6th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
“I am deliberately not counting the many freelance hacks who eek out a living and frequently turn up on The View but who can’t get a staff job at a paper”
Fucking prick.
The guy needs a good northside kick in the bollicks.
I´m in Spain at the moment and can confirm that the rain falls in the Ebro valley as well.