The FT and blogging: Round 2
After getting Trevor Butterworth to do a hit job on blogs last month, the Financial Times returns to the fray today taking a different tack. In its conspicuous consumption glossy, How To Spend It, Jonathan Margolois attempts to do with wit what Butterworth tried with gravitas.
"The last time I mentioned blogs (aka weblogs) in this column I recall dismissing them, I believe as the 'unwanted thoughts of the great unwashed'", writes the mordant Margolois. He's had an epiphany, of sorts, however: "I have to declare that the art of blogging for proper people has arrived, and that this is a genuinely important development both for the democratic culture and for the future of journalism."
This benign view is short-lived, though: "Sure, there are things I just don't get about blogging, Principal among these is the crucial question of who actually reads blogs. Other bloggers maybe?... Who can say yet. But even if only a handful ever reads them, blogs beat a secret diary kept in your knicker drawer."
Now, there's no point in taking Margolois too seriously about this as his column is titled "All over the shop", but the really puzzling thing is the FT's attitude to blogging. Surely, one of the world's most important financial dailies must be able to recognize that blogging is an expression of the "new craftsmanship", which is itself a sign of how capitalism is able to create forms of industry that are perfectly synchronized with the changing times. This is one of the themes, by the way, of "The Culture of the New Capitalism" by Richard Sennett. More on this after supper.
Two hours later. Ah, cevapcici! Tasty, filling and ideal for a climate in which it has been snowing non-stop for 19 hours now. Now, where were we? Craftsmanship. Actually, Sennett is not as upbeat about craftsmanship as Rainy Day is. Oh, well. We see it as a dialogue between hand and head, containing an ethical aspect that the Greeks termed demiourgos, and if capitalism today requires us to be constantly able to adapt ourselves to ever new realities, then the craftsmanship of blogging serves many useful purposes. To get an idea of Sennet's take on all this, here's a long, and somewhat depressing article he wrote for the Guardian last month.
