A look at the Australian blogosphere by blogs.com.au

It seems that a couple of local bloggers have found themselves in middle of legal issues arising from their blogging activities.

Blogger #1
Cairns Blog has being requested by Kevin Byrne, the Mayor of the City of Cairns, to apologise and remove this blog post or be sued for damages caused by the alleged defamation.

There has been three follow up posts by Cairns Blog explaining everything further and appealing for funds to help fight the legal action.
- Donate to our fighting fund
- We still need your financial support
- Censorship and posting

Blogger #2
Duncan Riley is being theatened with legal action after he wrote a blog post and video review about his poor shopping experience at My Mac Australia.

Duncan has published the business owners communication which states that they are looking to have the video and blog posts removed as well as compensation for lost business that may have resulted.

I remember reading and watching Duncan’s review at the time it was first published thinking that he definitely had rights to feel that he was an aggrieved party in the transaction so it is kind of disappointing to see it come to this.

Because political discussion and consumers reviews feature quite heavily in the local blogosphere, both cases will be interesting to watch to see what the implications are for bloggers. Not being legal expert I won’t bother speculating on how either of these situations will play out. But I do wish luck to both bloggers and hope you come out of the situations favorably.

People wanting to read some more on legal issues arising from blogging should go to Club Troppo which has a comprehensive post Feeling lucky? Bloggers and defamation liability as does Larvatus Prodeo with Defamation and the Internet.

Also of interest is Accidental Aussie’s notes from the Legal Issues and Blogs session from the recent Australian Blogging Conference.

Many of the top Australian bloggers host their blogs on U.S. supported blogging software/sites to avoid potential legal liabilities that are more prone to occur in Australia due to the lack of provisions protecting them in their country.

Apparently copyright laws in Australia are more restrictive than in the United States.

It was also brought up that Australia has no concrete provision similar to the 1st Amendment of the United States, which protects all citizens to the freedom of speech and or of the press.

Two key legal provisions that AU bloggers should be aware of when dealing with a defamation claim: notice and take down (you are notified about a defaming statement on your blog, and have the opportunity of taking it down to avoid legal course of action) and the provision to make amends with the defamed claimer.

The talented faculty at QUT Law’s Intellectual Property: Knowledge, Culture and Economy have published a number of helpful reports and papers on the use of electronic content in the digital age, for those looking for information on what is acceptable and unacceptable to copy, embed, download or distribute.

It really must be the season for Australian blogging events because WordCamp Melbourne has now been confirmed to be going ahead on Saturday November 17th.

After the great experience I had at the recent Australian Blogging Conference (I’m still to do my full write up of it. Sorry - been sick and busy) I will definitely be attending WordCamp Melbourne.

Will be good to see as many bloggers there as possible as these types of events are such great opportunities to get out from behind the laptop to meet other blogers face-to-face and discuss topics we are all so enthusiastic about.

Full details are available at: http://melbourne.wordcamp.org

Whenever I’ve got blogging news items backed up in my drafts folder and am too lazy to write a proper article for each item, I do a quick post titled the Blogiest links I could find. Enjoy!

1. Four terrific writing tips by Meryl Evans for bloggers to keep it short ‘n sweet.
1. All bloggers and blog readers know what this addiction is like. The confessions of a comment junkie.
1. I finally upgraded to WordPress 2.3 on most of my blogs. Was very easy as I used this sweet automatic upgrade plugin. Though be sure to first check the compatibility of your other plugins with WordPress 2.3 before upgrading.
   
   For people doing a manual upgrade I suggest reading Meg Tsiamis’ post which has some great discussion going on in the comments.
   
   If you are still considering whether to upgrade, the main improvement on the previous WordPress version is the tagging facility. Lorelle on WordPress does an excellent job in explaining the difference between categories and tags.
1. A very funny NSWF video about what a business meeting would be like if it was attended only by blog and message board commenters.
1. Problogger has a great article by Melissa Petri discussing blogging ethics and sponsored reviews.
1. Following along a similar topic, Meg T gives bloggers a quick run down of the various policies that they should be using. These are important to let your readers know what goes on at your blog as well as to help cover yourself legally.
1. The annual weblog awards are on again with a Best Australian or New Zealand Blog category. Go nominate a Aussie or Kiwi blog you think is worthy of recognition!
1. Finally, a news item for bloggers who have registered domain names. If you have a domain with either .com .net .org .info or .biz extensions, then I suggest renewing it for as long as you can afford (maximum 10 years). The reason? As well as the very favourable US dollar conversion rate we have going on here down under right now, the ICANN accredited domain registrar renewal fees are going up in the next few days.

I’ve got about 4-5 posts to do on the (un)conference from last Friday but will first mention that next year it will most likely be held in Melbourne around August/September. It was also noted that the 2nd Australian Blogging Conference will be held on a weekend to help those unable to make it on a weekday due to work commitments.

I can highly recommend attending as it was an excellent experience on many levels. So if you’re interested in blogs, citizen journalism, and social media then be sure you leave your diary open.

Meg Tsiamis’ latest post points to a link that shows the US based Google owned Blogger service is hosting 142,000 Australian blogs.

I need a script that will extract the URLs of these blogs from the profile pages on that link. I’m willing to pay for a developer that can run a script which can do it. Email me at anthony @ blogs .com.au for details and to discuss it further.

The Federal Government has released a paper asking for submissions into the possibility of starting a blog that would facilitate the discussion of policy to provide Australian citizens with a more interactive approach to policy development.

The blog would enable people to take part in consultations, posting views in relation to various items of text or video provided by the Government.

The discussion paper asks people to say how they would like to use an online consultation website and what features they would want to have included in it. Feedback will go into a public report.
via The Age

This is quite exciting news on an issue that was first raised in May and announced yesterday by Special Minister of State Gary Nairn.

I was a bit despondent about our Government’s use of social media earlier this month. After I asked readers of The Local if they knew of any local, state or federal blogs and came away with only three. However, this is quite encouraging as it looks like a big step in the right direction in allowing people to meaningfully engage with policy makers. I will go through the discussion paper later tonight and post my thoughts as well as any interesting issues sometime tomorrow.

As mentioned previously, the Australian Blogging Conference is on this Friday in Brisbane at QUT’s Kelvin Grove campus.

The event will be dealing with a whole range of varied topics with informal unconference discussions, is free to attend and there is already an impressive list of people who are confirmed to be participating.

It would be great to see as many bloggers there as possible. Though, those unable to make it will I’m sure be adequately covered with live blogging, review posts and podcasts.

Thanks to Meg’s helpful list of When Not to Blog, I know not to post my just written vitriol filled blog post about a I’ll sit on the fence but isn’t blogging kinda useless column by Rebecca Laskary on page 69 of the September 13-19 issue of BRW.

Maybe on Monday, when I’m not tired, angry and wanting to get drunk, I will post a constructive reply.

I generally avoid writing link posts but I have been busy with finalising the development of the new tools for blogs.com.au as well as finding and adding hundreds of new blogs (on September 10 we passed the 3000 Australian blogs mark in our search index and now have 3372 listed. Yay!). But with a whole heap of blog news items backing up in my drafts folder I have resorted to the laziest blog post genre known to man. Enjoy!

• John Lampard laments that finding a good web host for your blog can be a tough task.
• Jacques Chester has an in depth look at the interests of the many users of blog software.
• Laurel Papworth reviews last week’s Blogging is as Useful as Talkback Radio debate with a sensational post.
• Plans are underway for a WordCamp Melbourne event organised by James Farmer. I can say that 30% of the blogs listed here at blogs.com.au are powered by WordPress so it should be popular.
• Tom Worthington gives a review of a talk by crikey.com.au’s Stephen Mayne about Online journalism and its impact on traditional media.
• The Bulletin magazine launch The Bullring. An actual proper real life group blog. Bit of a shock to cynical me. Bloggers include Ellen Fanning, Paul Daley as well as the recently sacked Jack Marx among others.

Last Friday I attended the Brisbane Writers Festival discussion on Political Reporting and the Internet.

It was a good hour long session with probably 100+ attendees which raised some interesting issues. While I didn’t agree with everything that the speakers said, it was a nice precursor to get into some deeper analysis during the Australian Blogging Conference in a little over a week.

Below are my notes from the review of the discussion panel which I did on-air with ABC 612 Brisbane and ABC Local Radio statewide in Queensland on Monday night.

I’ve condensed what everyone said into the current and possible future of online political journalism as well as the main problems the discussion panel raised. Unlike my brief notes, Derek Barry from Woolly Days has done a much more thorough account of what each speaker said.

Political Reporting and the Internet
Date: 14 September 2007
Venue: SLQ Queensland Terrace
Speakers: Greg Barns, Christian Kerr, Margaret Simons and Graham Young chaired by Jose Borghino

Current Situation
The Internet is a disruptive technology that while different and chaotic presents opportunities for the existing players and new entrants to better inform, report and analyse news.

Based on current circulation figures the last newspaper will be printed in April 2040.

Anyone can be a journalist (is part of being a human being in the 21st century)

With citizen media quantity of journalism has increased but quality has not.

While the old media empires of Murdoch(with The Oz) and Packer (9’s Sunday) valued journalism the future looks to be all about fast food type journalism (eg. packaged, available and unhealthy)

Online political reporting is currently poor. Newspaper masterhead’s web sites are focused on lowest common denominator journalism (celebrity stories and bizarre news) and have not yet taken advantage of the depth of reporting available online and made a product out of it.

Australian political blogs are limited to around 200 or so of the same voices.

Bloggers have a reverse snobbery attitude towards mainstream media/paid journalists. Mainstream media/paid journalists don’t respect bloggers.

The Future
Death of the media empire that drives quality journalism. Everything owned by investment companies focused on audience size/revenues.

Investigative journalism does not fit into the future plans of the existing players (fast food journalism only).

Online media properties need to allow for paid journalists and citizen journalists to engage and interact in meaningful way around the story. Examples cited:
1. UK blogger Kevin Anderson for the Guardian who gained knowledge of the war in Iraq from Iraqi bloggers who shared their local knowledge that he used in analysis/commentary.
2. Greg Barns wrote commentary and analysis about the recent Haneef case for Crikey based upon the changing events almost hourly based upon of the news reporting by Hedley Thomas for The Australian. Bloggers and journalist working together to do a different job.

With online you no longer have to wait until the next day for commentary to interpret the news. But newspapers can save themselves by morphing into daily magazine like Viewspapers. Example cited was The Independent in the UK.

Radio + TV (will be ok because of its immediacy and portability)
Newspapers (national - ok)
Newspapers (local suburbans - ok because they focus on specific local issues)
Newspapers (statewide masterheads - stuffed because they have little to no relevance)

With online, Australia is very much behind US and UK with high quality and highly read new media publications. Branding matters and online is still dominated by the traditional media (News Ltd, Fairfax, ABC).

Issues it raises
How to fund new media enterprises that can do quality reporting, investigations and commentary?
- Free to air (rely on audience size to sell advertising)
- Pay per view (subscriptions, magazines and books)
- Gift economy (time like wikipedia or $$$ donations/philanthropy)

How do new media properties create a brand to compete with the power and reach of the existing media?

How can the audience trust what they read online?

With the Internet politicians are now going over the head of the media and direct to the audience. Will it create more partisan news and commentary in the media so they can attract a specific audience?

What role will the likes of Google and other services aggregating the news have?