Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

So, here I am, thinking about things and I surf on over to Germany?s leading weekly and type the word "blog" into its search window. And what does Der Spiegel deliver? "Suche: BLOG (Volltextsuche) Treffer: 0 Dokumente". Sobering result, that, for those with nanopublishing notions of challenging big media. Undeterred, I visit Spiegel's great rival and search again. But "Ihre einfache Suche nach 'blog' lieferte leider keinen Treffer" is what Focus says. Hmmn.

What gives? How come blogging with its hundreds of thousands of practitioners isn?t on the radar of the big German newsweeklies? A similar question was posed on 24 January by the excellent Norwegian blogger Bj?t沫:

"Why aren't there more European political blogs? There's the language barrier, of course, and the countries that have practiced linguistic protectionism most faithfully — France, Germany — will probably be underrepresented in the blogosphere for a long time."

This prompted the very talented German blogger, Tobias Schwarz, to respond with the following insight:

"I don't believe linguistic protectionism carries the day when it comes to explaining the absence of political blogs from, say, Germany or France, that are published in English. I don?t think there?s a simple explanation for their relative scarcity, apart from the obvious truism that English is not the native language of most European countries — as the discussion regarding Bjoern's entry amply demonstrates. I think, the most important variables have been named by those commenting in his blog — penetration of internet connection, especially flat-rate connections allowing to spend a significant amount online reading, awareness of blogging as a concept as well as a technology, motivation to put one?s opinion out there — someone mentioned a possible connection between 9/11 and a rise in blogging — , the main topics of the blog in question, one?s native language?s market size, the target audience, and evidently, the ability to write in English in a way allowing to express sometimes complicated issues and thoughts in a (hopefully) clear and mostly coherent manner. Just by looking at this range of factors (and there are probably a lot more), it becomes obvious to me that c.p. only a small fraction of blogs will be written in English instead of their author?s native language."

Blogging at its interactive best is a bit like top-class tennis, and Bj?allied beautifully with this comment:

"A blog in German or Norwegian stays locked behind borders. A blog in English transcends them. I'm sure there are a lot of Germans below the political and media radars, who have interesting views on what is happening these days. But as long as they write on the web in German only, few outsiders will ever know they exist. All we ever see of Germany is Schr? & Co. I don't know your political views, but if I were you I wouldn't be very content with that.

I very deliberately chose to write English on the web. It's partly to increase the number of readers, but also my own small way of going against the flow of cultural imperialism. Language isn't culture, and linguistic protectionism only protects foreigners against your culture, not your culture against foreigners. As long as Norwegians write their books, music, movies — and do their political thinking — only in Norwegian, we will be a sattelite to Western (ie our own) culture. To use Norwegian is a defensive measure. To use English is to go on the offensive. Many Europeans disagree with this, and German is of course more read than Norwegian, but I believe that is a sure way to shut yourself out of Western culture. Unless you are equally able to shut Western culture out of Germany, you too risk becoming a sattelite to your own culture. Perhaps you have succeeded better in shutting Western culture out than Norway has, but I doubt that's a good bargain.

I don't mean to say that Germany isn't a part of Western culture. It's a major part. But almost all its contributions were made in the past. Most of the _new_ contributions to Western culture are being made by the US and Great Britain. And they're all made in English. We can't expect to change that, but we can drop our linguistic pride, get out of the audience and onto the stage."

This is not an issue where one is required to take sides but I feel more inclined to follow Bj? reasoning here. With an era of global governance centered in Washington on the horizon, European bloggers who want to be heard above the noise will need to express themselves in English or, at least, bilingually. Check out Emmanuelle and The Dissident Frogman.

Diarist of the day: Dearman Birchall, 6 February 1881

"George Eshelby [local vicar] ells me that Mrs Travel's girl has been confined in her cottage of a still born child and that Williams [groom] has confessed that he is the father. Mrs Travel came with the same story. I blame her very much after the experience she had with her other girl that she permitted the daughter to come home from service without sending Williams away. The cottage is too small. Williams says it was no seeking of his. She laid on the top of him when he happened to drop asleep over his book. Even young Morris [footman] was found in equivocal positions with her. It appears to Williams she had tried to entrap him."