The Groan on Blogs.

The Guardian runs a piece on blogs. Usual stuff, not quite getting where the impact is:

According to the study, there are now "A-list" bloggers in the US, such as Andrew Sullivan and Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis, who are capable of setting the news agenda because they are habitually referred to by journalists in the mass media who rely on them to break stories.

Well, I suppose so, but why not note that these two are in fact professional journalists who also blog? Within the ’sphere those like Instapundit, Kos, Atrios, LGF have a great deal more influence and they are bloggers first and journalists second, if at all. I mean, sure, obviously, journalists are going to pay more attention to what senior members of that profession do in blogging rather than the upstarts banging on the door.

While Belle de Jour got the mainstream media speculating on her (or his) identity, and the likes of Scary Duck greatly amuse, there is a sense that the Americans take their blogging more seriously than we do. With the odd exception (Guido Fawkes' Order-Order.com and Mick Fealty's Slugger O'Toole blog on Northern Ireland for example), there is little heavyweight comment and it is rare to see a blog break a story or substantially move it on.

Again, I suppose so. Certainly, this blog has only broken two stories, one on the current Chinese textiles quotas (Mandelson does not yet have the figures he claims to have, they haven’t been collected yet) and no one has paid any attention to that at all. The other, well, not the greatest story of all time but it did make the centre pages of the Telegraph. What does rouse the ire a touch is this:

One of the most persuasive theories for this contrast is the far more rambunctious nature of the British national and regional press compared to the mostly regional, generally staid, US titles. So, the argument goes, American bloggers are fulfilling a need for a heated national conversation among competing viewpoints, whereas we can arouse much the same feelings of empathy or revulsion by reading Richard Littlejohn or Polly Toynbee.

That would be the theory put forward by Martin Stabe back in February then. Attribution to a blog would be nice, don’t you think? Especially as Guido, who you do mention, is running a Plagiarist of the Year Award?

Update: Owen Gibson responds:

Although I must point out that I hadn't seen Martin's post - that theory seemed to have fairly widespread currency among the people I talked to. I suppose it's possible that they themselves had their views informed by Martin's reaction to the Times piece in February, although none pointed me towards it.

So Martin, sorry, you may have identified the point but you ain’t gonna get the credit for it.