6 - ANALYSIS
The editors of the three Weblogs discussed in section 5, No Rock and Roll Fun Popjustice and Everett True’s Plan B Weblog, all came from a fanzine/webzine background. Where Peter Robinson and Everett True began their journalistic careers with fanzines, Simon Hayes Budgen began his with writing for a website for Liverpool Music Festival. This section intends to analyse how their Weblogs differ from and converge with the fanzine model described by Duncombe in Notes fromUnderground.
Although the three Weblogs discussed in section 5 deal with roughly the same topic, music, they do so in different ways. These three styles epitomise the styles native to the Blogsphere, as described by Rebecca Blood: The filter-style Weblog, such as No Rock and Roll Fun; the journal-style Weblog, such as Everett True’s Weblog on the Plan B website; and the in-between style of Popjustice’s Daily Pop Briefing.
Beyond this, it is clear that there is a distinction to be drawn in the tone of the Weblogs. Where Everett True’s is apparently
aimed at friends (he uses only first names, even when clearly writing about celebrities) and discusses his personal life, Simon Hayes Budgen and Peter Robinson aim for a more distanced attitude towards their subject matter. This may seem surprising, given that True is by some way the most established journalist of the three. It is apparent, however that this form
of ‘personality journalism’ is precisely what True is known for, as Peter Robinson puts it: “Everett True gets away with it because he’s Everett True. Anyone less than that going ‘I think this, and I think that and here’s what I did today’ and at the end of the feature ‘oh and I listened to a record as well’, that’s not interesting.”[68]
By contrast, therefore, Budgen and Robinson are models of journalistic integrity, employing their journalistic skills to ensure that their Weblogs are free from libel and contempt of court. It may well be this that has caused Everett True’s publisher to remove certain posts from his Weblog. This suggests then that the blogger must choose either self-censorship or external editing. Neither of these is particularly enticing for a format that appears to offer complete liberty in term of self-expression.
Again, the three Weblogs have very different attitudes to sources: Budgen relies upon outside media sources for his “rip and read”[69] version of music news, rediffusing existing stories to his readership. Robinson, meanwhile deliberately posts stories, often self-generated, that have not previously appeared elsewhere – and suffers for it when other journalists reuse his posts in the mainstream press. Everett True’s Weblog, since it does not deal specifically with news stories (although it will allude to them – for instance Johnny Ramone’s death[70]), is based purely on True’s own experiences of music, and of running Plan B.
It is interesting to note then that the two Weblogs written by professional music journalists tend to avoid direct reference to traditional media sources whereas Budgen (despite having journalistic training himself) offers a site that depends on online media for the majority of its content. This suggests two things:
- A different attitude towards the media by those who are most closely involved with it.
- That Robinson and True, because of their involvement with the press are more used to generating stories themselves, rather than relying on other media.
This tends to raise the question of whether what appears on these Weblogs can be called journalism. Of the three, only Robinson is certain that his can be called that[71], which he justifies by suggesting that music journalism for him is about analysis, this is clearly a point of pride, as he states: “I don’t put anything on Popjustice that I wouldn’t be happy with having in print with my name on it.” True denies that what appears on his Weblog is journalism, drawing a distinction between that and criticism: “What we do [at Plan B]’s an art form, and the blogs are part of that art
form, which is not journalism it’s an art form and the blogs are part of that. It’s a different kind of criticism. I do see it as
criticism to a large degree, just another approach to criticism.”[72]
The main distinction between journalism and ‘criticism’ seems to be to do with research. Budgen states that his
Weblog “[would] be journalism if it had more time to be pro-active.”
All three Weblog-editors first started their sites because they felt there was no space for them elsewhere.In the case of Everett True, he and photographer Steve Gullick started Careless Talk Costs Lives “because we felt that we didn’t have an outlet to express ourselves in any other way.” Peter Robinson explains that the reason he started Popjustice was due to feeling his ideas were going to waste: “It was quite frustrating because there were things I wanted to do and say and ideas that I had, and they were like ‘we can’t think of any way to make money out of this, we haven’t got time to do it’.” SimilarlyNo Rock and Roll Fun evolved out of another site called Liverpool Hoopla, which “grew out of a site for a Liverpool Music Festival, which decided that it didn't really need a sarky news page and so there was a split”.
These Weblogs provide their editors with a creative outlet that not only allows them freedom to experiment, but also acts as a showcase for their work. Both Robinson and Budgen have had their professional life affected by their Weblogs: “ There’s been times when I’ve done stuff and people have said ‘can you make it a bit more like Popjustice?’ Like if I’ve been a bit too serious in an interview, and they say ‘well can you do it as if you’re writing for Popjustice[73]. Budgen, meanwhile came to the attention of the New Musical Express (perhaps due to his regular ‘What the Pop Papers Say’ feature) and has written several reviews for it, which he views as “kind of amusing, as when I was younger [I] spent many hours trying to interest them in my writing to no avail.”[74]
Unlike the fanzine producers of Duncombe’s text, these bloggers have no distrust of the mainstream media, even while feeling divorced from it. In fact they’re more than happy to use the NME or other newspapers in order to further their cause: “If I was a Radiohead fan, and I wanted to get a review published saying how great Radiohead were, what’s the point? Because every fucking magazine says how great Radiohead are, or the Strokes or the Libertines. It’s like, well, it’s not as if my point isn’t coming across, someone else might be writing it, but at least readers are getting the point that I feel. Whereas, if I pitch an article to the Guardian or the Observer saying let me write about how great Alcazar are, and they say no, it’s not going to appear anywhere else.”[75]This may be, at least in part, to do with the subject matter of Robinson’s Weblog – it’s hard to accuse someone who writes about commercial pop music of selling out – but perhaps it is more to do with the old adage ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.
The blogs can also make the life of the journalist/blogger easier. Everett True reprinted sections from his Weblog as his editorial in Issue 0 of Plan B. While Robinson will not re-use content from Popjustice, he does state, “Sometimes I’ll do a post, and it’s a really long opinion piece, and I’ll think – cos Popjustice doesn’t make any money – why don’t I just send this to someone who’s going to publish this. Sometimes it’s like that, so there’s 200 quid that I would otherwise have spunked away on putting it on the Weblog.” His metaphor of masturbation a particularly vivid representation of why many people blog – self love.
Two of the three Weblogs have a definite sense of community to them. At Everett True’s Weblog, most comments seem to be from the Plan B editorial staff. Popjustice's messageboards and comments boxes act as a haven for pop fans who can spell. No Rock and Roll Fun, however, does not have any discernable sense of community. What it does have, however, is an enormous number of links (119) to other music Weblogs on its sidebar, which position it neatly within the Blogosphere, as is the case with any other Weblog. The sidebar links act as a portal for the reader and the blogger but also to find out where the blogger sees themselves, and what they enjoy reading. By comparison, Popjustice’s links box contains only seven Weblogs and Everett
True links only to other Plan B Weblogs. This feeling of community should help the blogger to tailor their writing to their perceived audience, but in practice it does not, perhaps because, as Everett True puts it: “the Internet is a solitary kind of pleasure, so when you’re putting your Weblog up it’s only you, and so it is just like a diary, because millions of other people can see it. But it doesn’t really matter when you put it up there. If you’re reasonably naïve about it, you might not even be aware that other people can see it.”[76]
Everett True makes it clear that his intention in running his Weblog (and indeed in all his writing) is to render the process of producing music journalism more transparent. By posting to his Weblog about his day, he is attempting to demystify his profession. This is subversive because it forces the reader to consider the previously invisible workings of the press. Similarly, Peter Robinson’s responses to the Mercury Music Prize and the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party offer his readers (whose views are not really represented by those bastions of the establishment) the chance to give their feedback.
[68] Peter Robinson, author interview
[69] Simon Hayes Budgen, email conversation with Tara Spinks
[70] http://www.planbmag.com/blogs/everett/archives/00000051.php
[71] Peter Robinson, author interview
[72] Everett True, author interview
[73] Peter Robinson, author interview
[74]Simon Hayes Budgen, email conversation with Tara Spinks
[75] Peter Robinson, author interview
[76] Everett True, author interview
Tone
Although the three Weblogs discussed in section 5 deal with roughly the same topic, music, they do so in different ways. These three styles epitomise the styles native to the Blogsphere, as described by Rebecca Blood: The filter-style Weblog, such as No Rock and Roll Fun; the journal-style Weblog, such as Everett True’s Weblog on the Plan B website; and the in-between style of Popjustice’s Daily Pop Briefing.
Beyond this, it is clear that there is a distinction to be drawn in the tone of the Weblogs. Where Everett True’s is apparently
aimed at friends (he uses only first names, even when clearly writing about celebrities) and discusses his personal life, Simon Hayes Budgen and Peter Robinson aim for a more distanced attitude towards their subject matter. This may seem surprising, given that True is by some way the most established journalist of the three. It is apparent, however that this form
of ‘personality journalism’ is precisely what True is known for, as Peter Robinson puts it: “Everett True gets away with it because he’s Everett True. Anyone less than that going ‘I think this, and I think that and here’s what I did today’ and at the end of the feature ‘oh and I listened to a record as well’, that’s not interesting.”[68]
By contrast, therefore, Budgen and Robinson are models of journalistic integrity, employing their journalistic skills to ensure that their Weblogs are free from libel and contempt of court. It may well be this that has caused Everett True’s publisher to remove certain posts from his Weblog. This suggests then that the blogger must choose either self-censorship or external editing. Neither of these is particularly enticing for a format that appears to offer complete liberty in term of self-expression.
Sources
Again, the three Weblogs have very different attitudes to sources: Budgen relies upon outside media sources for his “rip and read”[69] version of music news, rediffusing existing stories to his readership. Robinson, meanwhile deliberately posts stories, often self-generated, that have not previously appeared elsewhere – and suffers for it when other journalists reuse his posts in the mainstream press. Everett True’s Weblog, since it does not deal specifically with news stories (although it will allude to them – for instance Johnny Ramone’s death[70]), is based purely on True’s own experiences of music, and of running Plan B.
It is interesting to note then that the two Weblogs written by professional music journalists tend to avoid direct reference to traditional media sources whereas Budgen (despite having journalistic training himself) offers a site that depends on online media for the majority of its content. This suggests two things:
- A different attitude towards the media by those who are most closely involved with it.
- That Robinson and True, because of their involvement with the press are more used to generating stories themselves, rather than relying on other media.
This tends to raise the question of whether what appears on these Weblogs can be called journalism. Of the three, only Robinson is certain that his can be called that[71], which he justifies by suggesting that music journalism for him is about analysis, this is clearly a point of pride, as he states: “I don’t put anything on Popjustice that I wouldn’t be happy with having in print with my name on it.” True denies that what appears on his Weblog is journalism, drawing a distinction between that and criticism: “What we do [at Plan B]’s an art form, and the blogs are part of that art
form, which is not journalism it’s an art form and the blogs are part of that. It’s a different kind of criticism. I do see it as
criticism to a large degree, just another approach to criticism.”[72]
The main distinction between journalism and ‘criticism’ seems to be to do with research. Budgen states that his
Weblog “[would] be journalism if it had more time to be pro-active.”
Marginalised voices
All three Weblog-editors first started their sites because they felt there was no space for them elsewhere.In the case of Everett True, he and photographer Steve Gullick started Careless Talk Costs Lives “because we felt that we didn’t have an outlet to express ourselves in any other way.” Peter Robinson explains that the reason he started Popjustice was due to feeling his ideas were going to waste: “It was quite frustrating because there were things I wanted to do and say and ideas that I had, and they were like ‘we can’t think of any way to make money out of this, we haven’t got time to do it’.” SimilarlyNo Rock and Roll Fun evolved out of another site called Liverpool Hoopla, which “grew out of a site for a Liverpool Music Festival, which decided that it didn't really need a sarky news page and so there was a split”.
These Weblogs provide their editors with a creative outlet that not only allows them freedom to experiment, but also acts as a showcase for their work. Both Robinson and Budgen have had their professional life affected by their Weblogs: “ There’s been times when I’ve done stuff and people have said ‘can you make it a bit more like Popjustice?’ Like if I’ve been a bit too serious in an interview, and they say ‘well can you do it as if you’re writing for Popjustice[73]. Budgen, meanwhile came to the attention of the New Musical Express (perhaps due to his regular ‘What the Pop Papers Say’ feature) and has written several reviews for it, which he views as “kind of amusing, as when I was younger [I] spent many hours trying to interest them in my writing to no avail.”[74]
Unlike the fanzine producers of Duncombe’s text, these bloggers have no distrust of the mainstream media, even while feeling divorced from it. In fact they’re more than happy to use the NME or other newspapers in order to further their cause: “If I was a Radiohead fan, and I wanted to get a review published saying how great Radiohead were, what’s the point? Because every fucking magazine says how great Radiohead are, or the Strokes or the Libertines. It’s like, well, it’s not as if my point isn’t coming across, someone else might be writing it, but at least readers are getting the point that I feel. Whereas, if I pitch an article to the Guardian or the Observer saying let me write about how great Alcazar are, and they say no, it’s not going to appear anywhere else.”[75]This may be, at least in part, to do with the subject matter of Robinson’s Weblog – it’s hard to accuse someone who writes about commercial pop music of selling out – but perhaps it is more to do with the old adage ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.
The blogs can also make the life of the journalist/blogger easier. Everett True reprinted sections from his Weblog as his editorial in Issue 0 of Plan B. While Robinson will not re-use content from Popjustice, he does state, “Sometimes I’ll do a post, and it’s a really long opinion piece, and I’ll think – cos Popjustice doesn’t make any money – why don’t I just send this to someone who’s going to publish this. Sometimes it’s like that, so there’s 200 quid that I would otherwise have spunked away on putting it on the Weblog.” His metaphor of masturbation a particularly vivid representation of why many people blog – self love.
Community
Two of the three Weblogs have a definite sense of community to them. At Everett True’s Weblog, most comments seem to be from the Plan B editorial staff. Popjustice's messageboards and comments boxes act as a haven for pop fans who can spell. No Rock and Roll Fun, however, does not have any discernable sense of community. What it does have, however, is an enormous number of links (119) to other music Weblogs on its sidebar, which position it neatly within the Blogosphere, as is the case with any other Weblog. The sidebar links act as a portal for the reader and the blogger but also to find out where the blogger sees themselves, and what they enjoy reading. By comparison, Popjustice’s links box contains only seven Weblogs and Everett
True links only to other Plan B Weblogs. This feeling of community should help the blogger to tailor their writing to their perceived audience, but in practice it does not, perhaps because, as Everett True puts it: “the Internet is a solitary kind of pleasure, so when you’re putting your Weblog up it’s only you, and so it is just like a diary, because millions of other people can see it. But it doesn’t really matter when you put it up there. If you’re reasonably naïve about it, you might not even be aware that other people can see it.”[76]
Subversion
Everett True makes it clear that his intention in running his Weblog (and indeed in all his writing) is to render the process of producing music journalism more transparent. By posting to his Weblog about his day, he is attempting to demystify his profession. This is subversive because it forces the reader to consider the previously invisible workings of the press. Similarly, Peter Robinson’s responses to the Mercury Music Prize and the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party offer his readers (whose views are not really represented by those bastions of the establishment) the chance to give their feedback.
[68] Peter Robinson, author interview
[69] Simon Hayes Budgen, email conversation with Tara Spinks
[70] http://www.planbmag.com/blogs/everett/archives/00000051.php
[71] Peter Robinson, author interview
[72] Everett True, author interview
[73] Peter Robinson, author interview
[74]Simon Hayes Budgen, email conversation with Tara Spinks
[75] Peter Robinson, author interview
[76] Everett True, author interview
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