Those pesky right-wing bloggers

Over at Anna Raccoon*, I found this gem:

If the right wing blogosphere is successful, it is in no small part due to the fact that those who do nail their right wing colours to the mast, tend to be the self motivated, those who take personal responsibility for themselves, who don’t require any help from the state in discovering how to access ‘blogspot.com’ , nor funding in order to do so. If it costs a few bob, they cheerfully dig into their pockets – they have jobs in the main, some have demeaning jobs, but anything is better than relying on the state, and once they have their blog, they set about railing and ranting on the iniquities of the system. They fit their blogs in around their real lives, they get up early, or miss Goldenballs, or twitter from their mobiles. They just do it. They also happen to do it at a time when the Fabian notion of Socialism has reached biblical flood proportions in our lives. Pure coincidence. It could well have been the other way round. Except. Except, as Paul in Lancs says…..

“What is needed to get local activism-focused left blogging going properly can be summed up under the following sub-headings:

Costs, funding and content - My initial workings suggest that a local blog covering a population of 30-40,000 people might be able to survive on turnover of around £80,000 per year inclusive of a living wage for two staff and operational costs, but exclusive of delivery costs (see below) which will need to remain volunteer based in the short term.”

Money, we must have money……! You see? Straight away it becomes a lack or ‘resources’ that is preventing the left wing blogosphere from being successful. In order to counter all that inexplicable success in the right wing takes around £80,000.

I remember similar discussions at the time of the founding of LabourList: "all we need is money" and "the right-wing blogosphere is so successful because all those nasty capitalists are funding them."

What a crock of shite. Most of the blogs of any political persuasion I read, I read because of the content, not because the website is glam or has money behind it. To be honest, though, I don't hear this bollocks from people like Dave Osler, because he doesn't feel like he needs money to "engage" with his "community". Where I hear it from is tired political activists and politicians who haven't got a fucking clue about how blogging works. No amount of money can buy the respect and engagement you get from just fucking replying to your readers, which is why "Norm" has become a respected blogging sensation overnight, while "Peter" is still regarded as a jumped-up, out-of-touch drama queen by every blogger I know.

And despite everyone from Guido and Iain Dale down to the lowliest me telling them the exact same thing, the motherfuckers insist on doing it the traditional way: lots of glitz, press releases, recycled press releases, no dissent, no interaction and the inevitable "pushing on an open door" sense of tumbleweed desolation.

I wouldn't mind the repeated failures quite so much, but you know who's fucking paying for these repeated failures, don't you? Yep: you and me.