The Daily Novel

That New York Times article on the possibility of death by blogging also pointed out that the effects on your wealth can be just as bad as the effects on your health. They instanced cases of bloggers being paid as little as $10 a post and young people slaving away day and night for blogging companies and taking home $1,000 a month.

But Jeff Javis of City University (New York, no relation of City University, London) reckons his blog, Buzzmachine.com, is putting millions of dollars into his bank account.  The ad income from the blog, which he has been running since 2003, amounts to a total of $13,855, which his healthy profit considering the blog cost in hosting is only $327 a year. But hardly enough to live on. Nevertheless he decided to take the plunge and give up his well-paid day job as President of an online division of Conde Nast. And now he is back on a six figure income and and expects to have several million dollars in his bank account in five years time.

According to Jarvis the blog got him his job at the City University of New York and a contract to write a regular column for The Guardian, both of which pay real money, but not up to the level of a Conde Nast President. But it also led to companies paying him to come in and teach their executives how to blog. Then came a book contract which emerged from an idea that began in his blog which doubled his consulting income.

Jarvis wrote it should take only about two minutes to teach how to blog. That statement reminded me of Jeremy Paxman telling the City University, London that it only takes three weeks to learn the essentials of journalism. Both Jarvis and Paxman were speaking truth. But it does not follow that journalism students are wasting their time spending a year in a university or that that the executives Jarvis teaches are wasting the hours he spends with them.

Because in journalism, an understanding of the subjects you are mostly writing about and contacts with other people working in the subject area, can get you up the tree rapidly, even if your writing, spelling, etc is not that brilliant. And that line of thinking reminded me of John Gardiner, who was one of the best journalists on the Financial Times, and went on to become the chairman and chief executive of Tesco, until he retired two or three years ago. Probably even richer than Jarvis hopes to become.

I met Gardiner in the 1960s, by which time business journalism was becoming increasing dominated by the university educated and particularly the Oxbridge lot. I remember Gardiner because he had started as an accountant, during which period he had learned skills and acquired contacts which his colleagues fresh from the ivory towers did not have.

He was one half of the Lex column when I first met him. Thanks to his reputation at the Financial Times he was offered an executive job in the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, which was the Wilson government’s vehicle for restructuring ailing large companies in the British economy without full-scale-Attlee type nationalisation.

While doing that job Gardiner was offered the top job at one of the companies the IRC was trying to resurrect, the old Cammel Laird ship-building company. He took it, whereas most of the business school graduates would not have touched it with a barge pole, since they had learnt that Britain no longer any hope of ever becoming a great shipbuilder even again; the future had already been staked out by the Norwegians and the Japanese.

Nevertheless, he made a success of the job. Which led to him getting the top job at Tesco, a company which could not have more different.

All of this led me to start cogitating on what is learnt in the university of life, as contrasted with what is learnt in universities and the even more unanswerable question of why some people managed to learn in the university of life, while others get crushed.

But fear not I am not going to continue these ramblings. Because beneath Jarvis’s post was anther on how Web Two is changing journalism. That is a subject he really knows about and it has led him to draw maps to illustrate his arguments.

My next blog will be about that. Complete with my own map, maybe.

Just made myself a cup of tea. Emblazoned on the side of the cup, bought for me by one of my daughters, is the message above.

Which reminded me of several scare stories in the last few days suggesting that blogging is so bad for your health, it may be fatal. All based on the sudden death of two oldish people, who happened to be obsessive bloggers. Two personal tragedies, but as one commentator noted, two out of an estimated number of one hundred million bloggers is hardly statisically important. For a deeply serious consideration of the risks, read the New York Times story. Otherwise continue reading this light-hearted comment.

My family gets worried if I stay up half the night blogging, as I sometimes do. But my sleeping habits have always been erratic, and long before blogging began or computters were invented, I would write in the night, first with a fountain pen, later on a typewriter.

Sometimes then, if I did not feel like going to bed, or woke up in the middle of the night, I would play patience. Nowadays I play Hearts on the computer, which is quite as relaxing and much more fun, because I am playing against three personalities invented by the computer, who are better than most human card players.

They are certainly better than me, because Vista keeps a record of your score. And presently I have only won 43 per cent of the games I have played since Vista arrived on my screen in January.

Maybe it is going to kill me. Or maybe I will succomb later today when I have a healthy walk down to the beach, and a taxing walk climb back up the hill.

When I got back to London today I happened upon the blog of my head of department at City University, Adrian Monck. It was a blatant piece of self-publicity for the book he is writing with an Australian, to be called, ‘Can you trust the media?”

This is a disgrace for City University. And a disgrace for British journalism, because Monck professes to be a ‘journalist’.

Allthough he obviously does not have any of the characteristics of the people who I have learnt from.

City University is now, by a long way, the leading university training journalists. It numbers amongst its alumnae the present editor of The Daily Telegraph and the present editor of The Times.

And also a rather well known television bloke, Dermot Murnaghan.

If you go into Monck’s blog, you will see that as part of his self-publicity, he includes a quote from Dermot  Murnaghan, suggesting that he, Monck,  is a totally trustworthy chap.

I actually know Dermot rather better than Monck, because I taught him when he came to City University, when he was struggling to complete a Ph D thesis.

So I do not think it likely that he would want to aid the self advertising by Monck.

But I may be wrong.

But judge for yourself.

Just read what Monck writes.

Barack Obama is the darling of the college kids, and increasingly he is making the still handsome Hillary Clinton look like an over-worked school teacher, who is desparately trying to get the children to listen to what she says. As he sweeps from victory to victory, he is demonstrating that a man in his forties can as well get votes from people old enough to be his father, but America’s oldies are fighting back.

Ralph Nader, aged 73 has just announced that he is entering the fray for the third time. He does not have enough money to pay for the advertising and press coverage necessary to give him a chance of winning. And, regrettedly, it is highly likely that most of America’s youf do not even know who he is. But many academics, as well as some journalists, have argued that his canditure in 2000, was a critical factor in getting George W. Bush elected. Nader’s reputation rests on his life-long campaign to make big business accountable to the electorae. Amongst his many other achievments as the champion of the consumer he pushed Detroit into making safety a selling point for cars, along with the more seductive features of speed and appearance. It was a platform bound to frighten away all decent Republicans. But it warmed the hearts of many Franklin D. Roosevelt Democrats, apart from the trade unionists, who thought that Nader in power might well mean that many of their member would lose their jobs.

This time he is making it even more explicit He is the candidate of the people, not the party machines, not the other candidates who are being in his view, much too lovey dovey with big business. This time around he will not be an effective spoiler, either for Obama or Clinton, if she emerges as the Democratic champion.

Why? For a short answer, the best quotes are those everyone knows, which happen to come from a Republican President, Abraham Lincoln. You can’t fool all the people all the time. Powerful though his office is, the American President in 2009, cannot tell big business what to do. What I call, in shorthand, American consumer capitalism, is currently embraced by the Chinese, the Indians, and many of the Europeans. The giant international companies have many paymasters they have to satisfy. And they have become pretty expert in persuading their customers that their products and their world view is right.

Readers, you will all have read in the mainstream media, that Nader is running. But the point of this story is not, in accordance with the journalist training that those working in the mainstream media get, in the first paragraph.

It is the last paragpaph. Which will have to be a long one. And, as we all know, the mass readership only reads the first paragraph and the working classes don’t understand long words.

In the trawl for comments on Nader’s presidential bid, a CBS reporter asked Michael Bloomberg, the current mayor of New York, what he thought about it, at a routine press conference Bloomberg was giving about his business affairs. Bloomberg declared that every American had the right to stand for President. The message was go for it, Ralph. Additionally, as the CBS reporter dutifully reported, Bloomberg again denied that he was thinking of running himself for President. The CBS reporter worked hard and checked with the Bloomber supporters’ campaign. What they said is that Bloomberg will make his decision about whether he will run next week, after the results of the Texas and Ohio primaries.

Since I have written under the British libel laws, I would be the last person to accuse Bloomberg of lying. But I will say that his supporters know his mind better than he does! And I do think that Bloomberg could be a very serious contender. Not because I have not read my American history, and do not know of the long list of failed independent candidates. But because I believe that history never repeats itself.

But that is not a reason for not studying history.

Which reminds me, that the thing I am most proud in terms of my own personal biography is one of the things I did after I passed the British retirement age of 65, which was to start a new undergraduate degree is Journalism and Contemporary History at City University. All credit to City University for allowing, even encouraging me to start this degree. But my feelings about City University, like my feelings about most of the organisations I write about, are ambivalent.

Because a few years later City University fired me. (Message to the libel lawyers. This is journalistic licence. They did not actually fire me, they refused to renew my post-retirement contract, on the grounds, that, let’s face it, Bob, you are over seventy!)

But that’s just my own personal biog. So let’s return to the election for the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. The likely Democratic candidate is Obama, whom many still liken to JFK, for his appeal to youthful idealism. But they forget that the equally youthful George W. Bush, had made a pig’s ear of the job, so much so that anyone who stands for the Republicans is hobbled before he (or she, but so far there are not any she’s) has finished the first leg.

At the time I write, Obama is the clear front runner for the Democrats. On the Republican side there is no sign of a candidate who has any hope of stopping the bandwagon for McCain. His wife smiled at the press conference at which he was confronted with the New York Times suggestion that he had been fucking around with a blonde lobbyist. Quite different from Hillary Clinton, who looked distinctly uncomfortable when Bill was first being asked about Monica.

From my own viewing point, the sexual behaviour of the boss, is not the most important determinant. And, neither is it for the American electorate. Judged by the way people are voting, much of the American electorate does not vote according to prejudices about sexual preference, gender and race. This campaign has demonstrated that huge number of them are quite prepared for a woman or a black. (Whether they are ready for an openly gay President is still not indicated!)

And I don’t think they will blackball McCain because of the allegations that he has been an adulterer. Way back in the olden days, Palmeston acually won a British election when his opponents revealed his extra-marital affairs. Times change. But not too much. The journalists who followed Kennedy, knew all about his rather spectacular daily adulteries. They also knew that they doing in their own lives. Although they did not write about it.

But McCain has another problem, which has not been properly addressed by the mainstream media. He is 71.  And will still be ruling America at 75 if he wins. He is older even than Reagan, 69 when elected, and Eisenhower, 61. Eisenhower was still only 68 when I arrived to live in America in 1959, but he seemed much older. As does McCain.

Bloomberg in only five years younger, but he is more in tune with younger people. If he runs agaist Obama he might have a chance. McCain would lose a fight with Obama, but he would save the face of the Republican Party, because history would judge they had chosen a decent and honourable man (even if it is later proved that he cheated on his wife, because let’s face it, he is not alone on that score.)

BBC radio news just now has picked up just now on the latest infighting in the fight for the Democratic nomination for President. Apparently the Clinton campaign has been circulating a photo of Obama in Somali national dress on a visit to Kenya, in the hope that middle America will be reminded that Obama is really not much different from the slaves who came over from Africa in the last century. It is not likely to have quite the same impact a picture of Obama in a passionate embrace with a white intern.

It’s all a bit of a giggle. It is really a picture story which radio cannot do justice too. According to the Washington Post the story originated in the Drudge Report, which scooped the mainstream press with the Monica Lewinsky story, which caused more than a little embassment to husband Bill when he was actually in the White House.

I checked it out. Drudge treats it tongue in cheek. Along with the picture of Obama, is one of Hillary in her head scarf talking to a Muslim audience, Bush in some kind of native dress, and Bill Clinton similarly attired.

 Have a look for your yourself by following this link: http://www.drudgereport.com/flashoa.htm

Some stories are much funnier in print than on radio.

Just checked my blog readership figures. According to my service provider, 1and1, I had 1653 page views last Friday, which is my best ever. The total according to 1and1 since 1 January 2007 is now 373,561. I then checked the figures according to WordPress, whose service I use to put out my blog. They recorded 365,032 since 4 January 2007, which is not much different. So at least these two companies agree, so presumably the figures mean something.

I then checked my ratings with Technorati, which anyone can use to find anyone else’s blog ratings. I keyed in www.thedailynovel.com and was ranked 8,911,336 in the world league. Clearly I have a long way to go before I get into the Premier League. I have been using thedailynovel address for well over twelve months, but I started the blog as www.xcitybob.com, which I still own and use. So my blogs go out under that name as well. If I key that address into technorati, my ranking rises to 629,416.

To get some idea of where I stood in relation to others I looked at the Technorati ratings for three City University colleagues. Andrew Grant Adamson (who has since moved to the University of Westminster) ranks at 154,301. My head of department, Adrian Monck, comes in at 50,250. But way ahead of all of us is Roy Greenslade, unsurprisingly because as well as being a part-time Professor of Journalism at City University, does the main media blog for Guardian Unlimited. He is number 12,250 in the world blogging league.

Now that is really puzzling, because I distinctly remember a recent blog by Greenslade reporting that The Guardian techies had told him that he had scored 80,000 hits in 2007, which is way below my figures according to 1and1 and WordPress.

To add to my confusion I came across a blog written by Monck last November in which he recorded the top ten journalism bloggers according to Google Reader. In Monck’s league table Greenslade comes out top with 194 RSS feeds and Grant Adamson comes sixth with 65 feeds.

This discrepancy clearly arises because all these different companies are using different criteria.

But these results confirm my own impression that citizen journalists are not taking over the world.

Rather the opposite. Since the many articles written about the rise of the citizen bloggers, which were filling the newspapers and the web a year or so ago, the newspapers have redoubled their efforts in web journalism. The Guardian still probably leads, scoring around 13 million hits the last figure I remember seeing. But The Daily Telegraph and Times Online and The Daily Mail are snapping at the Guardian’s heels.

In a comment posted on Monck’s November blog an ex-City student, Tom Whitwell, came up with his own list of top journalist bloggers.

This is just an early morning stab at a big question, or rather series of questions.

What proportion of the blog readership is held by the world’s mainstream media organisations?

Is the rise and rise of Obama in part a reflection of his message being spread on the web by those millions of young Americans who support him and who all come from the internet generation?

Enough for one morning. I have to get back to my main job, which is getting my house on Lyme Bay, ready for the grandchildren, who will shortly be descending upon me with their buckets and spades.

This blog will seem like a mad rant, to anyone happening upon it accidentally. But before dismissing it, they should pause. Because what I have been experiencing over the past few months, is experienced daily, by thousands, possibly millions, of other people, who do not complain via blogs.  Because they do not write blogs. And because they have not spent so much time as I have to find out how the world in which we live works.

This world is dominated by very large companies, who are more powerful than most governments. These companies are not elected by anyone, not accountable to anyone, but their shareholders, who do not have any effective way of influencing what the companies do, unless they have a majority vote.

Everyone knows this. But no-one does anything about it. Not politicians, because they want to get elected. Not journalists, because…. I am not sure why. Journalists ought to look into such things, but few do. Maybe because it takes so much time, and their employers, who are mostly giant companies, want them to do things which don’t take so much time.

After spending three weeks in my bungalow in Charmouth I have achieved normal service there. I even managed to get a BT engineer to come. And he replaced the wires that had been corroded by the many years those wires have served, right back to the days when BT was a public service monopoly, required to supply a decent service to its customers.

The preset BT is controlled by managers who earn vast salaries, but who still have on their books, decent engineers, who know the business. Which is supplying an efficient telephone service.

After spending three weeks in Dorset I have now managed to get things down there working OK. But today I had to come back to London, and by BT line here tells me that I have dialled ‘an incorrect number’.  Even when I dail the number of my mobile which is stored in the phone!

In London BT has no techicnal problems, because the flat I am in has a BT line, which was working quite OK for the previous tenant. But although BT cut off my line in my old house around the corner on the first of August, they have still not managed to connect me here.

As soon as I got connected to the internet in Dorset I wrote an email of complaint to BT. Received an automated response that they dealt with such letters within 48 hours. STILL NO REPLY NOW FROM A HUMAN BEING AT BT.

This is not just a rant about the terrible arrogance and neglect of customer complaints by BT. Because I was able to get through to Sky, who did respond to my telephone calls, so I did not have to spend five hours on the telephone, before I spoke to a human being. GOOD ON YOU SKY.

Except tht☼ tonight I found that Sky had deducted 47 pounds from my direct debit. On top of the 60 pounds they have already deducted, although I signed up for Sky in Dorset for a deal which was 29 pounds a month.

From my own personal experience I know that there is a serious problem here. Which is not being looked into by journalists.

BT is ignoring its customers. BUT NOT MAKING MUCH MONEY OUT OF ME. Sky is being courteous and responsive, but is taking my money. Sky is dependent on BT for the telephone, because BT still control the exchanges. 

The customer is suffering. Me and thousands of others.

But journalists are not complaining.

If they don’t, who will?

Today I got online again at tea-time, thanks to a very helpful man from technical support at Sky. He suggested that my problems may be to do with the fact that I was using a long line to link to my computer in my study. So I moved my computer to the kitchen where I could connect direct with the Sky cable to the point in the hall outside, which is the first point the telephone cable coming into the house arrives.

Joy of joys. I was connected again instantly, with the I icon on the modem shining a bright and steady green. My son-in-law, who came in just then, was able to connect via me on his laptop and send an important email. Half an hour later, after engaging in social matters (I am, believe it not, on holiday), I found the magic green I had disappeared yet again.

Hours later, after doing many other things, it suddenly occurred to me that the main connection point might not be the first link in the chain, because my vendor did not use the socket in the hall, she worked from the socket in the nearby kitchen.

So I switched the connection to the kitchen point. And it worked.

How long it will go on working I am not sure. So I will post this now. And write more later, if I am still connected.

I am connected to the web again. But it may only be for ten minutes. Like last time. So here is the blog I wrote then. Will post it now. And then provide an update. If I am still online!!!

Monday 21 August 2007

Disconnected yet again.

Woke to another dawn in Dorset feeling at peace with the world again. Glanced at my computer modem, thought I saw the appropriate green light for I signalling that I was still connected to the internet. Started to write a blog in my head. The sun was dazzling me through the window beside my computer and brightening the white clouds in the mostly blue sky with just a few streaks of threatening black cloud. The sea, which I can now see from my typing chair thanks to Peter’s efforts in cutting back the bay hedge yesterday, is mostly a greyish blue.

There was no need to hurry because I had the whole day before me. So I cleared some of the books stacked below my writing desk. Most of them I put on the shelves. But some I happily chucked into the recycling box, like the vast Windows 95 Bible and Quark Express Step by Step. After making my second cup of tea I checked the phone. More bliss. I had a dialling tone. I switched on the computer. It seemed to boot up more quickly than usual. I called up Firefox and clicked on the bookmark for my blog: ‘Problem loading page’. Down on my knees to look at the modem. The I green light is out.

Picked up the telephone again and dialled my home number in London: ‘The number you have dialled has not been recognised.’ Dialled the main City University number; lot’s of crackling on the line but no connection. Switched on my mobile and dialled my number here in Charmouth. Nearly jumped out of my skin. The phone rang in the house. Before I could cancel the call I heard my youngest daughter jumped out of bed and answered the extension. Snarled when there was nobody there and stormed down the corridor to take her shower.

So BT has got me by the balls yet again. I cannot ring them on the line I am paying them for. They could ring me, if only they cared.

But they don’t.

Completed this blog at 8 AM Monday 21 August 2007. But still don’t know when I will be able to post it.