Bloggocks

Opening up the space

According to that handful of aggressively student Stopperblogs, which few people seem to bother reading (and which I don’t link to), if I fail to comment on an issue it must mean I don’t think it is important at all.

One of these blogs recently suggested that because I took three minutes to mention Burnley’s victory over Liverpool it apparently meant I think the FA Cup is more important than the Geneva convention. Or something like that……

Blogs aren’t newspapers or the BBC. We don’t, given our voluntary, free-time status, have any responsibility to report or comment on everything that is news. We don’t have a charter and we don’t have pressure from shareholders demanding profits and wanting to see readership figures.

Actually I rather wish it were otherwise and that I had the time and resources to employ a team of reporters and writers to produce a daily news and comment website. There are plenty of issues I would enjoy investigating at some depth, many topics I’d like to comment on. But unfortunately (for me) it isn’t going to happen.

In fact even if I were able to do an Andrew Sullivan – earning a salary out of the site so as to not have to worry about a day job — I think the guilt by ommission argument would still be pretty weak.

Having said all that, I have been thinking about broadening the range of issues we cover here and increasing the number of voices heard. We have given the Stoppers a decent kicking over the past two and a half years and I doubt we will want to ignore them in the future, but there are, of course, many other areas that I would like to turn towards.

With that in mind I intend to gradually introduce some new features.

For starters, after the interest prompted by Peter Tatchell’s guest comment here recently, I want to add more guest posts and I repeat my invitation to all readers – if you would like to write an essay, an analysis, or even a short commentary on an issue, feel free to get in touch with your idea and we can discuss giving you some space here.

Obviously the primary aim is to give an opportunity for those on the dissenting, democratic left a chance to expand debate but each proposal will be judged on its merits.

There are a couple of other ideas for improving the site in the pipeline but, as always, if you have any suggestions then drop me an email.