Or, to put it less obliquely, I’m halting blogging. Indefinitely. I may resume a few months down the line. It may even be a few weeks. Or it may not. But, frankly, it’s probably better to write this than do a series of half-arsed posts, all of which that start with “apologies for the lack of updates…”, an opening that rapidly gets tedious by the fifth letter of the first word.

There’s no one particular reason for this, but if I had to point to one reason it would be a lack of time. That and being very busy at work. Yes, being busy at work, a lack of time and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope a lack of inspiration when the time is free.

Being busy, as Terry Duffelen said to me on Twitter earlier, comes and goes. But I’ve been hideously busy for around four months now, and I’ve been thinking about calling a temporary halt to blogging for about half that time.

It’s not just the amount of time that I don’t have – it’s the desire to do other things with this time when I’m free. I spend all day working with social media, reading blogs and other internet-related things, and I’m finding in the evenings I would rather not have to open my computer, but cook, watch TV, read, go to the cinema, go to the pub, go out for a meal, go to the gym. And when I look at that list, there’s not a great deal of that I’ve managed recently. Essentially, I need downtime to switch off. Blogging used to be that. It isn’t anymore.

Usually it’s only snatched time late at night anyway. As in common with most recent blog posts, this is being written after 11pm. Which means I don’t get as much sleep as I’d hoped. Which makes me a bit irritable the next day, which makes me less likely to blog. And so on.

There’s also a lack of time to cover topics, and cover them well. In the last two weeks I’ve had about half a dozen topics, both football and non-football I’ve wanted to write about. But I wouldn’t have had the time to do anything other than a few snatched words.

What about something like Posterous, you may say? What indeed. I like Posterous a lot. I’ve had a play and think it’s a very nifty little platform. If I were starting out or starting anew, I’d definitely consider it.

But I either write for other blogs or try and offer some form of analysis on here, that a shorter scrap-book post on Posterous wouldn’t have been able to do justice to, even if I could post it on the train into work.

The bottom line is when I write, I research first. For every post, I’d say the amount of research done is equal to the time spent writing the piece, more so with the football articles.

I know what you’re going to say now – how did you ever work in a busy newsroom? Well I did, and I could again, no problem. But this isn’t a newsroom, this is blogging; this is something I do in my spare time, and something I rarely get paid for (certainly not on this blog).

There are so many bad bloggers – and journalists – who will knock something together in the blink of an eye without having done any research or checking any facts. Fine, this approach may mean I take longer over my posts but I’d rather be right than first, especially as this blog (and others) carry my name. I refuse to compromise on quality and accuracy for the sake of being able to knock out a couple of extra posts.

It’s not that the joy isn’t there – I still love words, and I still love writing and genuinely wish I could do more of it, or spend my days thinking of witty asides to drop into finely-honed articles – but as was said to me the other day, it’s like I’m trying to do two jobs on top of other things.

And ultimately, my priority is to my job, because they pay me. And I work hard, so throw in an extra job on top of that… well, I can manage it if I really want, but in honesty, I’d rather recharge my batteries, unwind and be fresh for the next day of work. Shoot me for attempting a work-life balance.

As much as anything, I think I needed to put this down so that I didn’t have the spectre of an unwritten blog hanging over me. The guilt feels far less when you actually announce you’re not blogging any longer. And that way people cant go ‘this is a bad example of a blog, he only posts once a fortnight.’

So that’s it. Me and blogging are done for the time being. That’s here, and with football blogging as well. You may see a few pieces pop up from me though – these will be ones I’ve nearly finished or have already committed to. After that, no more.

Well, maybe not that final. I simply don’t know if I just need to abandon blogging for a couple of weeks to recharge my batteries, or six months, or if I just don’t want to come back. I just don’t know.

This blog will remain as it is – it’d be a shame to delete it and I may feel the urge to blog gets too strong.

Oh, and if anybody even thinks about trying to use this blog and announcement as an example of how blogging is drying, I’ll personally take that lazy one-blog assumption and stick it… well, you get the idea. I’m just a blog. I’m certainly not, and never have been, indicative of any trend.

I’ll probably need to change my bio now as well…

Lights. Off.

How likely is this to happen, and is this a Murdoch misstep or will he surprise us yet again?

It’s worth just quickly starting with paid:content’s report. Murdoch didn’t exactly say that his publications would block search engines, as he seems to be unsure of how his own publication, the Wall Street Journal, currently handles search.

The consensus on Twitter seems to be that Murdoch would be shooting himself in the foot by withdrawing from Google and Google News. As Charles Arthur notes, Google are unlikely to be troubled by this.

More than that, if Techcrunch are to be believed the WSJ gets around twenty-five per cent of its traffic from Google and Google News.

Even if this is some plan to get more people buying into the content he’s locked down behind a paywall, it still doesn’t totally make sense. People still have to find the content somehow (although I suspect The Times, Sun, WSJ et al would only need a fraction of their current users to pay in order to make a decent amount of cash).

Is this a case of a big beast of the old media not really getting the internet? Some would point to MySpace as another example, but I’m not so sure. At the time it was probably a decent buy (not any more, though) and it’s not like Murdoch is the only person from traditional media to make a less-than-stellar purchase of a popular online company. Hell, enough online companies make the same mistake.

Murdoch clearly thinks he’s onto something and it would be more beneficial to him to be out of Google’s directories than in it. Personally, I think he’s mad in this regard – SEO is hugely important for newspapers -but there’s always the nagging sense that he might be working on a masterplan that will have us all in awe.

And it’s also worth remembering that if he somehow convinces a new Conservative government to break up the BBC’s online news offering (not beyond the realms of possibility) then suddenly Murdoch will be in a lot stronger position. Albeit still without SEO or Google ranking.

My own feeling is that Murdoch thinks he can take on Google in a straight fight, much as he took on the UK newspaper market and won. But he may not have realised that the game has changed slightly.

Google isn’t in competition with Murdoch’s empire – at least not directly, and not where journalism is concerned. Google also probably won’t be too fussed if Murdoch’s publications remove themselves from the directory. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of other news sites out there.

Murdoch strikes me as one of those from the old school who seems Google and others as being parasitic. But the trouble with parasites is that unless you find a way to manage them, they will eventually kill their host Murdoch would do well to keep this in mind.

A couple of months ago a group of us held the first ever (probably) football bloggers meetup: Socrates.

Basically, it was a chance for football writers to get together, watch a match, have some nibbles and generally mingle. And what a brilliant night it was.

Now the second Socrates is arriving faster than Dennis Rommedahl down a blind alley.

This Socrates will be on Wednesday 9th December at Mint’s ‘Open Sauce’ in-house bar in Vauxhall. Beer, food, footy and great company. What more could you want?

Funnily enough I was thinking of posting something similar myself. But it also got me thinking.

Part of this also stemmed from a colleague asking for a list of bloggers for area x earlier today. My list was a bit small. “That’s great,” came the response, “but, er, is that it.”

I checked. Yes, that was indeed it. And, what’s more, it was probably a bit smaller than the last area x blogger list I sent over.

Which neatly melds these two lines of thought together. This isn’t a sign that the blogosphere (sorry) is getting smaller, nor are people stopping blogging. But they are consolidating.

Plenty of people still have personal blogs, but it’s kind of inevitable that blog activity tails off at some point. It takes a lot of time to run and maintain a blog, especially if it’s just you running it.

You know those blogging advice guides that tell you to blog every day. Great, but you try blogging every day on your own blog, plus having a job, plus having a social life, plus having a relationship, plus writing for all those other blogs you promised people to. Why, you’d almost think blogging was a full-time job.

It’s one of the reasons I’m quite a fan of Posterous.

It’s somewhat inevitable that, if you’re any good, you’ll either try and flex your muscles and write for blogs for bigger audiences, or group blogs that carry more prestige. After all, it helps you get more writing and blogging work, and so on.

So, I can either say: “Oh yes, I blog at Gary Andrews.net,” and people may expect a wonderfully daily updated site. Or I can say: “I write for Soccerlens, twofootedtackle.com, and Pitch Invasion. And I have my own blog.” Kind of sounds more impressive really.

If you’re really good, others will pick up on your work and you might even get a mainstream publication or two pick you up for occasional pieces. Plus you flit between half a dozen different blogs. Before you know it your personal blog is looking a little forlorn or serves merely as a place to dump everything you’re working on.

It’s not like it’s a surprise that blogging, and websites, and group blogs ape more traditional publications really. There’s only a small percentage of bloggers who have the time to consistently post, and these tend to be the ones who set up blog networks.

But this brings us to another point to briefly touch on – online PR. If blogs are consolidating, and bloggers are moving between online and offline publications, where does this leave your online PR specialist?

In times past, your non-online PR (no, I have no idea what the best name to label these as is) would take care of the press, the magazines, the TV, the radio and your online PR would beaver away looking for bloggers or cool websites.

But now your blogger is writing for the newspaper, and blogging as well, and that reporter you’ve got labelled as a star contact is spending more time updating his blog for the newspaper, while another journalist has set up an online magazine, yet the hot young blogger has launched his new news and opinion site for the same topic and, now you come to look at them, they look remarkably similar in terms of content. And they’re all on Twitter.

I’ll be shocked if online PR is still considered a separate discipline in five years. And I think I’m being generous in timescale here.

Yet you’ll still find people who insist online PR is a separate discipline; an area that only online specialists can deliver results. Yet, increasingly, your online and not-online PRs are pitching the same spaces and, if they’re doing it well, it’ll be in exactly the same way.

I’ve said many a time before, it’s not a mystery on how to pitch blogs. To that, you can add, there’s no point drawing up a long list of blogs and websites to get coverage on if you’re not going to see the benefits or the ROI.

You wouldn’t invite the Glossop Advertiser to a national policy briefing that has little relevance to Glossop, solely on the basis that it’s the same medium as the Guardian. Similarly, why would you want to pitch a blogger on a topic that has little relevance to them, other than the fact that, like Blog Y, they’re also based on the internet. Great, it’s been covered by 20 bloggers. But that’s not much use if it’s only relevant to the audience of 2 out of the 20.

There’s nothing mysterious about contacting bloggers, and there’s no shame in going for the biggest blogs in that area if they’re the most relevant. But it’s also worth remembering not to forget the smaller individual bloggers writing in the same area. After all, they’ll probably be editing the bigger blogs in a year’s time.

So, in case I disappear for days on end, here’s a couple of things you may have missed while I was away.

1. A small piece from me at Reputation Online about the general nature of my work and why it’s important to change things.

2. A truly bizarre story of two American girls who decided to hop across the Atlantic to watch Oldham Athletic. Away. At Millwall. I had a chat with them. Hopefully, they’ll be on the podcast next month, which should be entertaining!

Back to hermiting

Outta the country for a while. Ultra-strong comment moderation is on. Soz

First up was the Trafigura case, of which so much has been written, it’s somewhat pointless to rehash completely what went on (Adam Tinworth has a nice, concise summary). In a nutshell, the Guardian were gagged on writing about reporting on a Parliamentary question concerning Trafigura and there actions surrounding the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast.

Once the Guardian wrote that they’d been gagged, Twitter (and plenty of blogs) quickly ensured it was one of the most discussed and written about topics online. The Streisand effect, if you will.

Much has been said about how Twitter brought about the downfall of Carter-Ruck’s gagging order. For what it’s worth, I suspect it would have been lifted eventually – you simply can’t stop papers reporting on the democratic business of Parliament just because it damages your client’s reputation. That would abolish hundreds of years of precedent. There’s a fair bit of that around.

For me, that’s the most important aspect, more so, even, than Twitter’s role in all this. The very fact a law firm thought it could ride roughshod over a basic right that’s essential to any functioning democracy is somewhat concerning. It would have set a very dangerous precedent, and it’s good to see, for ones, MPs from all parties standing up pretty strongly against this. This would have been a step too far.

What Twitter definitely did was to accelerate the process. Carter-Ruck may not have backed down so quickly were it not for Twitter, and it’s unlikely that it would have spread onto more news outlets, and the original root of the litigation wouldn’t have been dug up. In all honesty, can anybody recall Trafigura’s name before this?

As Adam says, it was crowdsourced journalism at its finest.

The second was Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir’s rather sickening piece on the death of Stephen Gately (no, I’m not going to link to it), which again hit the trending topics as Twitter users flocked to express their disgust. Again, this became, and maintained its place, as a trending topic on Twitter throughout the day.

This was somewhat different from the Trafigura campaign in some respects – it was more about decency than an affront to democracy. Nevertheless, the strength of feeling was enough to crash the Press Complaints Commission’s website and cause advertisers to ask to be removed from Moir’s article on the Mail’s site.

There has been a lot written about Stephen Gately’s death, some of it probably untrue, and some of it not overly pleasant. But it was this one article that ignited Twitter’s fury. It could have ben written by any writer in any national paper – the result would have probably been the same.

The Moir case really shows the power of Twitter. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at how many complaints the Mail gets each day. It’s incredibly rare for them to issue a statement around a complaint so quickly though (in an episode that contains just a touch of schadenfreude).

The difference, I think (and this is only hypotheticals), is that Carter-Ruck’s injunction would have been overturned sooner or later. This isn’t to say Twitter didn’t help, but it was a key player rather than an essential in getting it lifted. With Moir, the statement would never have been issued were it not for Twitter.

Moir also grasps the wrong end of the stick with her statement by describing it as “clearly a heavily-orchestrated online campaign”. Wrong. A heavily-orchestrated one implies a degree of organisation, whereas the reaction to her piece was spontaneous. It was the strength of feeling towards Moir’s article rather than a grassroots piece of action from, say, a gay rights group. It’s difficult to think something would trend so quickly and stay trending by organisation alone. It needs other Twitter users to keep talking about it long after it first moves towards trending.

And it’s also why I can’t see an organised campaign working as well as the Moir campaign. There’s only so far you can tap into the internet before it falls away, a victim of natural information turnover.

A quick note on the politics of Twitter as well. Somebody (I can’t remember who) noted that the two major Twitter campaigns were predominantly on liberal topics.

Is Twitter a liberal haven? I’m not so sure. To me it feels liberal, but that’s because of the people I follow. That doesn’t mean there’s not a large conservative following on there.

Secondly, it’s worth pointing out that Trafigura transcended political divides. Having heavyweight and idiologically different bloggers like Guido Fawkes and Chicken Yoghurt lending their support it somewhat like the suspension of cold war, in online terms. The only internet community recognised the chilling threat of the super-injunction for what it was: an affront to democracy. That does not necessarily make it liberal.

The Moir reaction leans towards a traditional cause of the left, or liberals, but you don’t have to belong to that part of the political spectrum to be appalled by her views on Stephen Gately. It, perhaps, shows how we as a society have become more liberal and tolerant, but it isn’t quite a cause championed entirely my liberals.

For me, Twitter comes across as more libertarian than liberal, and there is a crucial difference in this. It’s quick to stand up for freedom in all sense of the word, but also leans away from censorship. It certainly isn’t an area where one spectrum of politics dominates though.

Ben Goldacre has covered the story in his Bad Science column, and it’s quite damning, especially his conversation with the expert, Dr Diane Harper. I’ll repost a paragraph from his article, which speaks for itself.

“…I contacted Professor Harper. For avoidance of doubt, so that there can be no question of me misrepresenting her views, unlike the Express, I will explain Professor Harper’s position on this issue in her own words. They are unambiguous.

“I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a ‘controversial drug’. I did not ‘hit out’ – I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview.”

Journalists are fallible. We do make mistakes. Occasionally we get the wrong end of the stick. But there’s getting something wrong that you haven’t understood properly and bending the facts to a state where they can do longer be called facts any longer.

It depressed me, it really does. In an industry that’s going through upheaval and can be subject to greater scrutiny than ever from anybody with a computer – and that has serious trust issues – articles like this just serve to undermine the public’s trust in journalists even further.

As was highlighted in the Royal Institution debate, the Express can produce good, accurate journalism. And it’s always worth asking questions on health issues.

But not like this. This isn’t good journalism. It barely even passes as a form of journalism. It’s irresponsible writing that has the potential to lead to women needlessly developing cervical cancer.

Did the Sunday Express really think this was an acceptable trade-off for a headline-selling front page?

Like I say, thoroughly depressing.

It’s not an area where there’s necessarily a right or wrong answer either. Some incredibly – in my view – poor blogs are inexplicably popular, while there’s a handful of blogs in my RSS reader that were put in for content but are strangely hypnotic and compulsive reading, despite being dull as ditchwater. And, naturally, there’s some really good blogs out there that are only known in very small circles, which is a crying shame.

Like blogs, pieces on how to blog are ten a penny and usually come with one or two experts dishing out advice. So Lauren Fisher’s crowdsourced piece on advice to new bloggers at Simply Zesty is refreshingly interesting (despite having my opinion buried in it).

The long line of those queueing up to give advice is a long list of well-known names in blogging circles, all with their own opinions. And what’s fascinating is the theme that emerges in the advice. So much so that it would be easy to condense this into a few bullet points that could be distributed to new bloggers.

• Be yourself
• Don’t rehash the same stuff everybody else does unless you have something to add
• Engage in the community
• Enjoy yourself

And there’s really nothing more than that. Seriously, that’s all that’s needed as a basic starting guide.

What’s equally as interesting is where the advice differs in places. Content is key is another undercurrent, but how best that content is delivered is another question. Should you blog regularly, daily even? Yes, no, and it depends are all valid answers.

Similarly, audience is an interesting question. If you’re doing a blog around a specific area or brand, then that’s easy to visualise your audience before you start writing. Something like a general personal blog, or a blog around a somewhat more vague area (how large is media for example) is harder.

I’ve always thought of start a new blog as somewhat akin to Sartre’s artisan creating a knife, and the definition of man, in Existentialism and Humanism. First the blog exists, then it surges forward and defines itself. And then continues to definite itself. Just because the writing has never touched on a certain topic, it does not mean this topic can never be broached.

Certainly this blog has changed drastically since it was first set up, and the early days were also worlds away from the first blog I ever created.

And that’s also the joy of blogging. You’re always learning, always developing, always reacting and always changing. Sure, there’ll be constants over time; the writing style, for one thing, will evolve into something recognisable (but this doesn’t mean it won’t stop evolving).

As such, there’s no such thing as a complete blogger, or anybody who completely knows blogging. It’s always changing. As Heraclitus may have said, if he’d been born thousands of years later and involved in the blogging scene, you cannot read the same blog twice.

What we can do is immerse ourselves in blogs and online culture. But the minute anybody lays down their keyboard and proclaims to be an expert on blogging, for whatever reason, they’re lying.

Essentially, in everything, you can either move forward or fall backwards. Standing still isn’t an option. Which is to say the blogger who knows it all will be tomorrow’s Luddite.

Case in point – the Sunday Express’ front page from yesterday: “JAB AS DEADLY AS THE CANCER”

Now, with the death of Natalie Morton, hours after she’d received the cervical cancer vaccine jab [1] was always going to lead to some interesting reporting. Some has been good, some has been bad and some has been scaremongering. Especially after the point where it was established that she died from a tumour and not the jab.

The story itself is largely built around the fears of an expert, Dr Diane Harper. In many respects, this is nothing unusual. Most journalists have built stories around experts. I’ve done it myself, although they’ve usually be economic stories rather than science.

And there’s nothing wrong with this, per se. Often an expert provides a new, different angle and also helps with one of the first rules of good journalism: tell the audience something they don’t already know. I’ve learned a lot from chatting to them and the stories are usually interesting.

But a lot depends on the expert themselves, who they are and what they are saying. And that, rather than the story they’re talking about, is the important part. Because there are a lot of interesting experts out there.

Let’s take AIDS as an example. It’s not stretching things too far to say Africa has a serious problem with the disease, and that antiretroviral drugs stop Aids becoming a death sentence for sufferers. Yet there are people, who have lots of expert-looking expert credentials, who will use arguments such as population growth in South Africa as a reason why the numbers of being dying from Aids is too high. Or that vitamins can cure the disease.

In short, they can sell themselves as experts but their claims aren’t necessarily the kind you’d put on the front page of a newspaper, and strongly suggest this outsider view is worth listening to.

But back to the Express and the cancer jab story, which, by the time the Express ran the interview, was fast becoming old news.

Reporting on just about any kind of issue is always going to ensure somebody shakes their head and disagrees with it. The more high-profile and emotive the story, the more likely this is.

I don’t often agree with the Sun or the Mail’s take on current affairs, but there are plenty of others who’ll be in tune with this line of thinking. There are tabloid scares – some justified, and some not – but usually there’s some basis to start from.

Not here. Virtually every bit of the Express article is just plain wrong. I dislike hyperbole, but there’s a very real chance that parents could read the story, refuse to allow their daughters the jab, only for their daughter to catch the virus, and contract cancer. This isn’t politics, or food scares, or the like, this is the health, life and potentially death of the next generation of the female population. Is it really worth getting blood on the hands to sell a few extra papers in this manner?

I’m not hugely fond of jumping up and down and crying bad journalism at the tabloids (or the broadsheets) – stones and glass houses and all that. There’s a lot of good journalism in all of them, and I’m continually amazed in the best possible way at how good some of the journalists I know one these papers are.

But just because we’re in a profession, doesn’t mean we can’t hold it to account and call it out when publications get it badly, dangerously wrong. There’s a line between reporting potential health problems and dangerous scaremongering that could cost lives. On this occasion, the Express have crossed it [2]. I posted a link to the piece on Twitter earlier. One response from a journalist said: “That makes me want to disown my profession.”

In fact, this story has got me so upset at the reporting that I’m going to do something I’ve never even come remotely close to ever wanting to do before: complain to the Press Complaints Commission.

Frankly, I don’t expect it to have much effect. The organisation is somewhat toothless at the best of time. And writing to it feels like grassing up somebody at school.

But if nobody says anything, it means there will be more bad science, more panic and, potentially, more lives lost. I’m not trying to set myself as an arbiter of what’s good or bad journalism; I’m just beyond appalled at this one article.

If you feel the same, then I’d urge you to also complain.To help, my old colleague Chris White has already written a letter (about 3 minutes after reading the story). He sent me the text of his complaint and I’ve reprinted it below. Feel free to adapt it for your own use:

“The front page of the issue of the Sunday Express published on 4 October 2009 leads with the headline “Jab ‘as deadly as the cancer’.”

The “jab” in question is the Cervarix vaccination against the two strains of human papillomavirus shown to trigger up to 70% of cases of cervical cancer.

The story follows the death of 14-year-old schoolgirl Natalie Morton, who died shortly after receiving the vacciation – but whose postmortem found her cause of death to have been a previously undiagnosed tumour.

The claim that the vaccination is as deadly as the cancer is manifestly untrue. At the time of this solitary death, around 1.5 million girls had received the vaccination. Cervical cancer affects an estimated 16 women per 100,000 per year, and is fatal for around 9 women per 100,000 per year. Even if the vaccination had been responsible for the death of Natalie Morton, then the cancer is clearly almost 150 times more dangerous than the vaccination.

That this is based on the opinion of “expert” Diane Harper is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what her opinion is: it only matters what the data show. (This is why academics are subject to a process of peer review for publishing their work: despite their supposed expertise, papers must be approved of by their peers before publication. The mere opinions even of experts count for little within their own communities and should not carry any greater weight with the public, nor with journalists.) There are no data suggesting that the vaccination is dangerous.

Furthermore, the quote from one Richard Halvorsen questioning the postmortem finding that Natalie Morton died from cancer, “If you have cancer you have symptoms”, is, essentially, a lie. Many cases of cancer can be asymptomatic — including, in a tragic piece of irony, most cases of cervical cancer.

This is little more than ill-founded scaremongering and irresponsible journalism of the worst kind. Its only effect is bound to be — as was the case with the coverage the MMR “controversy” — to reduce take-up of the vaccine, in which case the Sunday Express will share responsibility for further deaths.”

EDIT: Malcolm Coles has flagged up his campaign to get Google’s results to show better advice and information for parents concerned about the jab, so I’m more than happy to include links to cervical cancer jab information, cervical cancer vaccination, and a Q&A about the cervical cancer vaccine.

[1] Ok, I’m taking liberties here as well. I know it’s jab about the virus that can lead to cervical cancer rather than the cancer itself.

[2] Ironically, a story from the Express was held us as a good example of science reporting at the debate between Lord Drayson and Ben Goldacre, and I’d go along with the Science Minster to a point when he says that sensationalist reporting can be good for science. The Express’ article goes long beyond that point.