Name calling is powerful magic. Can you imagine being called by another name? Would it make you a different person? Could you feel the same about yourself?
I was going to be called Andrew, apparently. Mum and dad and both sets of grandparents had sat around and debated Christian names for ages and eventually decided that Andrew was a fine name for the little bundle of joy that the stork had brought them. So dad set off for the register office one fine summer’s afternoon a week or so after my arrival with Andrew on a scrap of paper folded up in his shirt pocket. Mum wrote the name in her best handwriting; dad wasn’t a good speller, she was taking precautions.
Dad wasn’t in any rush. After all, I had managed so far without an official name, what would a couple more hours namelessness matter?
He’d finished his milk round early and strolled into town. Along the way he stopped off at The Blue Ball and The Friendly and The Kings Arms and The Brown Cow and The Brittania, and by the time he got to the register office it was knocking on half past four. He went up the the desk, ceremoniously unfolded the paper, chewed the pen for a moment, and wrote Philip (one L) in the book.
Thanks dad! I would never have made a very good Andrew – no disrespect to all the Andrews out there, but they will know what I mean.
He still lumbered me with a bloody ridiculous middle name, however. I still never volunteer my middle name. Lets just say it’s more suited to the dressage than to kick boxing, and made life a one long nightmare at school. I suppose I could have got rid of it as an adult – and I recently heard of a chap in Leeds who has changed his name to Sue Ellen Ewing; what does that say about the power of names? – but there’s a bit of me that says the name is mine, inextricably and irrevocably, and there’s nothing much I can do about it.
But it isn’t just personal names that we get attached to and let define us. All of us get attached to a set of Big Abstract Nouns and see people who share a different set of labels as wrong, bad, or plain bonkers.
Take Tory, for instance. I didn’t meet a Tory till I was in Sixth Form, they just didn’t exist in my world. A Tory was an evil beast that lived down south who lit cigars with ten pound notes and drank the blood of workers’ children. Actually, my opinion hasn’t really shifted on this one, so bad example.
What got me thinking about names in the first place was a little spat on Twitter about one name in particular; blogger. It’s a funny name. Some people are very attached to it. Some other people see the name as the sign of Satan, a symptom of moral decline, a badge of dishonour, and a mark of social ruin.
I must admit, I’ve always been a bit iffy about it. Evidently it’s something I do (I’m doing it right now, aren’t I, or is this something else, such as … I don’t know … writing perhaps?) The word is somehow attached to me, but like my middle name I don’t care to call attention to it too much.
I’m fairly convinced that my disinclination to describe myself with the label blogger is some sort of snobbery. Writer sounds much more serious, worthy, important, doesn’t it? Nobody ever accused writing of undermining the fabric of civil society. And writing is legitimate, it’s an art. It’s even better than journalism!
So, from today, in solidarity with my blogging comrades, you can call me blogger.
That’s right, I’m outing myself … Philip Schofield Kirby blogs!
But does that mean I’m not a real writer then?
I saw a bit of the ‘spat’ on Twitter yesterday. Anyone who’d put a ‘blogger’ below a ‘writer’ clearly doesn’t know what a blogger does, ie, spend hours writing things for the enjoyment of their fellow man.
I suppose if you compare Charles Dickens with some shallow person blogging purely about themselves with no grasp of language… then you have a real contrast, but then you can also compare Katie Price’s ‘literature’ with a fine blog like this one.
So if there is no difference in quality, is it still fair to accuse ‘bloggers’ of ruining the chances of ‘real writers’ by writing for free? Of course not! There will always be paying outlets for written work, and there have always been unpaid ones.
What people are really afraid of is not that ‘bloggers’ will hurt ‘writers’ but of change, and the world is changing fast right now. People worry about the internet, because they don’t understand it or what further changes it will go through and cause. They worry that there won’t be any more jobs, ever, because the economy is bad right now. They worry about the baggage retrieval system at Heathrow…
Fear is perfectly natural, but shouldn’t be the basis for bashing talented writers who happen to like getting their work out there and (sometimes) giving it away for free.
The End.
PS I like your middle name? What was the inspiration for it?
Emily, I think you just talked yourself into doing a guest post … maybe on how new media are changing the way writers and journalists have to think about what they are doing? What do you think?
As for my middle name … my parents had a sick sense of humour. I think my dad had just heard Johnny Cash’s Boy Named Sue, and thought it was funny. It isn’t.
And my initial … PS … like an afterthought.
Which is nice.
You should be honoured to have a name inspired by Boy Named Sue 😉
Absolutely agree, Emily. What I found most interesting about the ‘spat’ was the implication that you had to be trained to do writing in public and then get paid for it.
If you had to choose, would you rather have ten thousand followers who read your work because it amuses and inspires them or a wage because Paul Dacre or some Rebekah Brooks type does?
Poor but awesome Mr PS Kirby
But as Dr Johnson said, no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
Is there some blockhead / blogger etymology there? We should reclaim blockheadishness
one of the best blogs I know is Bloggerheads … there ain’t half been some clever baahstards …
My employer is based in Taiwan so I have a lot of Chinese-speaking colleagues. A tradition in the Chinese-speaking world is for people to adopt a “Western name” whilst in school that they can use for communicating with people internationally (Chinese is a tonal language, so pronouncing people’s Chinese names correctly is difficult for speakers of other languages).
The Western name can be a transliteration or translation of the Chinese name, but more often than not it is just a name the person chooses that they think best suits them. And it works – people really do all have names that reflect their personalities, rather than their parents’ personalities.
Which is awesome.
Y’know it’s a tradition that’s always saddened me.
I have a fair number of Chinese colleagues and I’ve felt slightly deflated on finding out gradually that all of them are basically operating under assumed (western) names.
Reminds me – sort of – of being taught (by rote) how to pronounce the name of Olaudah Equiano when learning about the slave trade. I know elective name changing is different from being named by the person who bought you, but I reckon there’s still an unfortunate colonial legacy at play here.
My ex boyfriend had the surname Schofield, I’m sure he says it means ‘badly made hut’ !!
That’s a new one on me … probably accurate in my case, if I ever could be bothered building a hut.
I used to think my name was a hindrance (thanks mum!) – a lot of people think I can’t spell my own name and actually mean ‘Peter’.
However, on Google it’s awesome. I’m the only Peer Lawther the world over (well, certainly on the web, which is our world nowadays). Finding one particular ‘John Smith’ on the web must be such a drag; to find me takes all of about a second.
My mother obviously knew about the power of personal branding on the web when she named me 37 years ago…
Anyway, with creative types, ‘blogger’ still has an amateurish connotation that we know it has outgrown, but it’ll take years to rid itself of. Even ‘journalist’ is still subservient to ‘writer’ and we all know how long that moniker’s been around.
But the bigger picture is this: out in the real world it’s just semantics. I doubt a majority of people know what a blog is even now, 13 years after blogging came along.
Recently I did a little bit of PR for my team around the charity I work for, and a lot of employees just looked blank when I mentioned the word ‘blog’. In the end I just explained it as “an informal, opinion-based website”.
So I have to say I’m a writer to them. I know I’m not, and I perhaps don’t have the qualities (of what I perceive) to be a writer, but at the same time part of all our roles as online commentators should be about broadening understanding of the web to the majority, and reducing the perceived techno-babble aspects (even though, for us, it’s completely clear). Until there is that level of recognition of blogs using ‘writer’ isn’t disingenuous but necessary.
I bet you get a lot of “Pier” too.
My parents obviously couldn’t have foreseen a certain gopher side-kick, so I can’t blame them for the unfortunate namesake, but it certainly hasn’t helped my “personal brand.”
I think you are right about nobody knowing or caring much about the semantics – like I said, I’m sure most of the sneering about blogging is simply snobbery – but there may be a serious point from our journalist friends … what is the impact of blogging on their profession? Obviously they think it’s negative, mostly, as they tend to be the most vociferous anti-blogger activists.
I think the word “opinion” is what gets the (trained, disciplined, conscientious, professional) journalist most riled. And I’m not sure that’s what blogging is about … though I can’t work out why I think that just right now.
And I don’t see what’s wrong about saying blogging is writing … to me, it’s just writing, whatever the platform.
To my mind Blogging – personal, democratic, for the sake of it
Journalism – professional, traditionally elitist, (should be) balanced/ impartial
Both writing. Neither ‘better’ or more worthy. Now I would include the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ as blogging, albeit a form that started before the advent of the internet with the commentary section of their print edition. (I believe this to be in the spirit of blogging).
As a sideline, someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Guardian (seeing as I mentioned them) start as a result of single issue pamphleteering anyway? I mention this as I also partly agree with previous comments on this elsewhere that what we’re seeing is just fear of change or fear of widening participation (one of these fears understandable and the latter contemptible).
I think writing is either good or bad, no matter the medium it happens to be on.
Journalists have a reason to be worried. As they see it, the rapid spread of self-publishing platforms (which is essentially what blogging is) is ruining their trade. Which, like all trades, is based on limiting access to the means of production. So, what you see as democratisation, they interpret as the dilution of quality and the erosion of standards.
And they may be right.
Yes, I think the Guardian started as pamphleteering, by amateurs … and they were the good old days.
I think if you recognise that they are different forms within the category of writing then you can agree that blogging is a democratic widening of participation in the act of writing without running scared from the inevitable change in quality. Two different things. Everybody should just get over it.
There’s journalists I like to read, there’s bloggers I like to read. I can’t see the point of sticking them into a room and chanting “Fight!”.
If you’ve thought about word order and attempted to craft those words to shape thought in some way you are probably a writer. If you’ve done more than a few blogs you’re probably also a blogger. If you’re paid to write for a larger organisation in a professional capacity you’re probably qualified to stick ‘journalist’ on your passport right? Ultimately who cares? Seriously. I think it just comes down to the quality of the writing on whatever ‘platform’.
Hi Phil,
I train journalists at Leeds Trinity and I certainly don’t see bloggers as threatening or ruining our trade.
The ‘trade’ requires a never ending supply of quotes and varied opinions to put current events in context, or to set up discussion and debate. The opinionated (who used to write in ‘letters to the editor’, sometimes in green ink) are now just a lot easier to track down via their self-published blogs.
In the same way we’ve always had ‘citizen journalists’; we used to call them ‘eye witnesses’ and they didn’t carry broadcast quality recording equipment in their breast pockets.
So, long may bloggers thrive. It’s healthy that concerned citizens seek to put a variety of views in the public domain.
What differentiates a journalist is that they have to make a wide range of subjects, not just a personal passion, accessible and understandable for a given audience.
I’m a generalist, not a specialist and I need to know who to go to for an explanation of complex issues and how to then translate that information into a form my reader, viewer or listener will understand – because, crucially, they don’t have time in busy everyday lives to seek out all that information for themselves. These sources may well include local bloggers with established readerships and reputations.
As a chef works with the best sourced ingredients he or she can find to produce an appetising meal, attractively presented for a hungry diner, so the journalist works on an attractive and satisfying report for a curious audience.
But it ain’t personal; blogs are, and my blog is the only place I will make personal comments or express opinions. At work, as my first editor told me back in the Adler and carbon paper days of the seventies, a journalist hangs up their opinions when they hang up their coat on arrival at the office in the morning.
Hi Richard,
this comment is almost a guest post. In fact, why not do one when you have the time.
I think you may have missed the context – probably got better things to do right now than scrutinise twitter for the local spats, ha!
The unseemly brawl involved two “trained” journalists (or perhaps three) who couldn’t reach an agreement over the value of blogging. The older and more senior journalist(s) were certainly suggesting that blogging was ruining the profession and causing the collapse of job prospects. The younger journo was simply goading, and goading rather effectively.
I’m not sure if I agree that blogging is about opinion, or that it has to be about a necessarily narrow niche. Certainly that’s not the case when it comes to culture/art/living, where surely anyone with an experience can contribute? The journalist is offering a professional opinion, but the person next to him or her seeing the same thing may have a different, but equally valid, story.
For me, in the end, it’s more about the story than the opinion. Journalist contribute a small but significant supply of stories, but they can’t write them all … and I’m interested in the stuff they often miss.
Does that make any sense?
And it would be good to have a post from a “proper” journalist about how they see the relationship to blogging, how social media is changing their trade. I think a lot of people would be interested in that.
Richard, I think journalists have the idea of blogs being about opinions because that’s what THEY use them for. When they say “this is my blog” it’s them warning us “hey guys, here’s where the objective facts stop and the opinions might start”. Doesn’t necessarily make it true for the rest of, though.
I agree with Philip Schofield that blogs (they’re just pages that get filled with words and pictures) are as much about stories as opinions. And it just so happens that these days there are fewer and fewer stories being produced by fewer and fewer paid journalists – mostly because we aren’t prepared to cough up for news and information any more.
So some of the gaps are getting filled on the web by non-journalists who are trying to do just what you say real journalists do – finding information and translating it into a form their curious readers will understand and find attractive and satisfying. For free.
And if readers find the stories don’t connect with them and the writing is crap, they don’t come back. Just like newspapers and radios.
I seem to have ruffled a few feathers with this ‘facts’ and ‘opinions’ debate.
In essence all I’m trying to say is that in a world where anyone can create a blog (obviously, that’s the point) the only thing the reader can be sure of when encountering a blog they’ve not read before is that the writer believes what they are saying – at least, if we discount deliberate spoof sites and attempts at trolling one’s opponents. Therefore any facts, or purported facts, quoted will tend to support the author’s argument. Bloggers are under no obligation to seek out inconvenient or opposing facts which support a different viewpoint. They are doing their thing for free, as Leeds Citizen rightly points out. They have the final say on output without any corporate or regulatory interference, so long as they avoid libel, contempt or obscenity.
Ultimately this means the only real control on bloggers’ standards of accuracy is personal motivation; many will check facts conscientiously and trawl through source documents, unearthing stories in the process that so-called professionals miss in the scramble to hit deadlines with limited resources.
Some have ready access to communities, or to sources of specialist knowledge, not easily available to mainstream journos.
Others, sadly, will do a lazy cut and paste job or (worse) invent, recycle uncritically or embellish facts, helping deliberately or accidentally to perpetuate the internet phenomenon of ‘repeat until true’.
Contrast that with the operation in a busy regional newsroom at the BBC or the Yorkshire Post where there is a rigorous culture of fact-checking, multiple sourcing and oversight from subs and producers before anything enters the public domain.
If I read or hear ‘radioactive foxes discovered in Farsley’ on one of the meainstream outlets I’ll believe it, and I’ll be worried. If I read it on a blog, I’ll think it’s worth following up and checking but I won’t immediately pack up the family and head for the hills.
That’s not to say that important, original stories don’t appear in the blogosphere; of course they do. I also find Twitter is consistantly ahead of mainstream media on breaking local stories.
But do I believe everything that’s blogged or Tweeted to be factually accurate? Of course I don’t. Mainstream media get things wrong but when they do there’s an inquest. It can be a career finisher.
In a world of (effectively) infinite information it’s trust and reputation that will determine where users go first and regularly for THEIR information. Journalists are no longer the sole newsgatherers, but they have an increasingly important role as news curators and facilitators.
So when I suggest ‘blogs are for opinions’ … that’s what I know to be true as a starting point.
They may contain much more, but on encountering a blog for the first time I can’t know that until I’ve developed a relationship with the author through regular reading of posts which turn out to be accurate, or through other interactions on social media.
As that relationship develops the blogger moves into my mainstream, and the various overlapping circles (in a city like Leeds) are an important part of the information infrastructure.
Your interpretation of the mainstream media is spot on… for a place like Trumpton. You don’t take into account who owns the mainstream media at all and unfortunately, this has everything to do with which stories get reported and how. Your analogy of a chef ‘cooking up a story’ is uncannily accurate; imagine Rupert Murdoch breaking many eggs to cook an omelette and that’s a more potent image…
Is this about journos versus bloggers or who you trust? If I read about radioactive foxes in Farsley in The Sun or The Mail or The Sport, I would discount it as more of the same old drivel. According to the one source I looked at though, 14 million people read them every day so you’d have to say they count as mainstream.
I taught sociology for a while and we encouraged young people to check the sources and be aware of the political bias of everything they read. I’m not sure that the professional media is ahead on points overall, despite some honourable exceptions.
I’ve stayed out of this but have very strong feelings about being a responsible human being. Therefore I think our blog works hard to facilitate intelligent conversation, yes a cacophony of opinions, but I’m really proud we’ve set a tone of respect.
So lot’s of ‘stories’ present themselves to us, which in turn could feed the belly of beast motivated by paying a team of writers. We could whip up scandal, bring people to the site by courting controversy, or just court the famous for their lofty opinions knowing that’s what would bring more visitors.
But what if our motivation was to develop a community, and provide a space for people to test out their voice, to be heard, to enjoy the creative process of telling their story? What if we help grow the quality, the appetite to get involved, to contribute to the multiplicity of viewpoints, so that instead of being told what to think we have a place to think for ourselves?
This sounds a little earnest, but I’d like to see a openness to encouraging people to ‘give a shit’ Not be force fed it.
So am I a blogger? A publisher? Who cares really? Not the reader, or the contributor. What do they want? That’s what matters
being force fed shit is just wrong … sometimes earnest is the right tone to strike, and I think we do try hard to model “critical friendship” even while trying to be lighthearted. It’s like we were saying earlier, that’s our point of view.