« What's a blog? | Main | The pay-for-loyalty phone plan »
December 08, 2005
Margo Kingston abdicates
Political journalist and founder of the Sydney Morning Herald's Webdiary has pulled the plug on her venture into independent journalism, on the perfectly understandable grounds that the enterprise sent her broke.
Margo has proved herself to be quite the master of the cryptic comment, given that she's in the communications business. She never gave us the details of the rift with the SMH that precipitated her departure. Now she writes: "Certain events have proved to me that my skin is not thick enough to survive in this game." Does she mean the journalism game? Or the blogging game? Possibly both. It's certainly true that journalism in the blogging medium is a lot tougher than in the traditional world of newspapers.
Out here, your readers bite back. It takes far less effort to dash off an abusive email or comment than to take the trouble to write a letter to the editor. So those of us who do have by-lines have got to be prepared to take it on the chin every now and again. Or maybe she found it difficult to get the sort of access a journalist needs to survive without a masthead like the Sydney Morning Herald's backing her up. What was it that got under her skin? Dammit? We do hope Margo will be a little more forthcoming on the topic.
We've always felt that Margo should have contributed more material to Webdiary than she did. While it's very worthy of her to give all these new voices a forum, and while we support the idea of grassroots journalism, we found we couldn't warm to many of the contributors to Webdiary.. It's fashionable to criticise the so-called mainstream media, but trained journalists practising their discipline seem to Bleeding Edge to produce a better product, by and large. Mind you, there do seem to be quite a few trained journalists who don't seem to be all that good at practising their discipline. On the other hand, we couldn't get beyond the first couple of chapters of Not Happy John.
Margo's departure then, is sad. She will be missed. But it doesn't mean that journalists can't build a career out of blogging. Provided they don't mind being constantly broke. And have ultra-thick skins.
Posted by cw at December 8, 2005 11:13 AM
Comments
I too find Margo's decision to pull the plug sad. I found her consistent and direct. You never had any doubt where she stood.
As cw indicated, she didn't appear to devote sufficient personal attention to the diary and that was a major mistake. Let's hope she isn't lost to journalism as strong left of centre journos are presently in short supply.
Posted by: Justin at December 8, 2005 06:58 PM
For those interested the webdiary continues in another form at:http://webdiary.com.au/cms
Posted by: Justin at December 16, 2005 12:09 PM
She was amazing, and I aspire to be just like her one day.
She'll be back, cant keep a good journo down for long~!
Posted by: Mel at January 25, 2007 05:04 PM