Every now and again one comes across the 'Bloggers - who needs them?' article, written by a journalist (see here for example). Decrying the low standard of much of what is to be found on blogs, and contrasting it unfavourably with the content of the regular media, the article will set out to deflate the claims and activities of the enormous number of us who happen to enjoy blogging, having our say whatever it might be. Against some of the more exorbitant claims made by a very few bloggers, such pieces may have a point. But otherwise you wonder why their authors bother. There is poor stuff on blogs, but there is poor stuff everywhere, including in established newspapers. That's the way the world is. And you can read whatever you like, or not. There is also good stuff to be found on blogs, as in established newspapers. It's a mixture, here as there, as most places. I don't care to comment on relative proportions because I don't care, period. The point stands whatever those proportions are, and one should get used to it. The more canny amongst journalists are untroubled by the existence of the blogosphere, and they've adapted to it.
These reflections are prompted by an argument currently going on over book reviewing. I haven't followed all its stages, but it seems to involve a literary variant of the anti-blogger gripe. John Sutherland worried, in The Daily Telegraph, 'what the web is doing to the craft and ethics of reviewing' - and about people 'shooting off their mouths'. Horrors! That any old body, and lacking the proper credentials, should be able to give his or her opinion about a book. Whatever next? Then there was this on Sunday from Rachel Cooke in the Observer:
The question that Sutherland has raised... is not only fair; it is one that no one who cares about art, and especially writing, can ignore.Well, excuse me, but I think I care - to an extent anyway - about art and writing, and I'm not especially troubled here, because people, at any rate plenty of them, can tell the difference between a well-written and well-informed, instructive, etc., review and something that is worse than that. I also think that the following question merits a loud raspberry:
But what if the media... gives up on serious criticism, exchanging it for the populist warblings of the blogosphere? This would be easy to do, and cheap. But my God, I hope it will not happen. This is not only because there are so many critics, past and present, that I admire. It is because so much of the stuff you read in the so-called blogosphere is so awful: untrustworthy, banal and, worst of all, badly written.'Populist warblings' is quite exquisitely chosen, don't you think? But why should, why would, the media or anybody else give up on serious criticism? I mean how many pointless, ignorant, rambling and indeed utterly vacuous articles has one read in established newspapers, without giving up on the more serious things that these papers contain?
The 'end of civilization as we know it' comes across as a comical theme often enough. But at least where it involves an imagined catastrophe of world-historical scope, it can possess dramatic charm. In the present case, however? A snooty fear of the imminent collapse of reviewing standards? My God, my God, now that truly is belly-laugh stuff.