Belfast Blogs.com

What happens when the irresistable blog meets the immovable earner?The thought crossed my mind recently as I noted the passing of two of Ireland's more popular blogs - Sigla and Present Tense.Both are now firmly in the past tense, as their authors move on to pastures new and, crucially, paying.I can appreciate the difficulties for a journalist who has a blog. You write for a living, which is hard enough. Getting paid for writing is even harder. So where's the motivation in doing it for free? A blog is in a way only encouragement for people to expect your work for nothing - including that nefarious species, editors.I don't think it's a coincidence that both Sinead and Shane were functioning hacks before they blogged. I get the sense that blogging was something they tried and found...

Next time you open up the Indo and see a vomit-inducing hagiographic puff-piece about His Royal Highness 'Sir' Tony O'Reilly, remember this.Or when you wince as the Irish Times lectures you like a prissy maiden aunt about how you should vote in a referendum, remember this.Or when you peruse the rows of red top tabloids and sneer at the garish pictures of scantily clad starlets and schlock headlines in a superior manner, remember this.Freedom of the press is a privilege we enjoy. With it comes things we are interested in hearing and happy to be informed about. With it also comes lectures, preposterous opinions, spin, fluff, puff and outright nonsense on all too many occasions.But that's the point of diversity of opinion and press freedom. It permits all sorts of truths to be told, in a...

Everyone over a certain age (let's say 30) can recall the harrowing impact of Michael Buerk's first reports of a famine in Ethiopia in 1984.The sheer biblical images of starving black children - their hollow eyes pleading for food to placate their empty, distended bellies, their ribs stretching their thin skins, their limbs shrivelled to mere bones and skin - shocked the West in our relative affluence.What followed was Band Aid, Live Aid, and the growth of global consciousness in relation to the appalling poverty suffered on the African continent.Since then, charities have reported 'donation fatigue' and the diminishing returns of shock footage of African carnage or disaster. Mass rape and child slavery in Darfur barely stirs us now. Burma is flooded, and we can barely bother to put a...

I love property porn. You know the stuff: it comes in a colour supplement in your weekly regional paper that's longer than the paper itself is.Before they get to the actual adverts, which funds the whole thing, there's a few pages of blatant fluff masquerading as reviews of newly available property.No matter what the economic climate, never mind if there is an enormous property bubble popping around your ears, what you'll read in property porn is always universally positive.If prices are collapsing, then property porn will tell you 'this house should be of interest to investors and first time buyers, offering unprecedented affordability in this much sought-after area."If it's a derelict flat in a slum redlight district, it will be described as "offering a unique opportunity for a...

The Ian Bailey libel action against five newspaper groups has ended suddenly. It seems that the eight year action, which Mr Bailey took when the newspapers suggested he may have been considered a suspect in the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, was settled out of court yesterday.The newspapers' defence was always that they had not said he was the murderer of Ms du Plantier, but that he was considered a suspect by the Gardai. Bailey sought to argue that they had attempted to pin the blame for the murder upon him.But following the sudden end of the action yesterday, when the newspapers agreed to pay some of Mr Bailey's costs from a previous action which he lost in the Circuit Court and waived the costs they themselves had been awarded, the allegation that Mr Bailey was a reasonable...

According to RTE, Justice Minister Michael McDowell launched another unwarranted attack on the media last night.Apparently, the Minister believes that truth is becoming a casualty in the reporting of politics in Ireland. He also warned other politicians against courting cheap headlines.Obviously the hypocrisy of the man has few limits, if any.Wasn't it McDowell, after all, who used Dail privilege to accuse prominent investigative reporter Frank Connolly of travelling to Colombia on a false passport, and being involved in a plot to provide FARC guerillas with IRA explosives?His accusation has been vociferously denied by Connolly and disregarded by the Gardai. But that did not prevent McDowell leaking his non-story to a pet hack at the Irish Independent.But the end result of this appalling...

I had promised to stop giving out about Ireland's most pointless journalist, and I was doing well, really I was.Then my attention was drawn to this new horror. No, not her girth. I mean the fact that Newstalk have given Roisin Ingle airtime outside of the wittering women's hour that is the Orla Barry show.Fair enough, it's scheduled for during my nap between breakfast and the early cross-channel soccer game on a Saturday, so I haven't suffered having to actually listen to the show, mercifully.But it was bad enough to read that preposterous biog that you just know she wrote herself, thinking it was witty and self-deprecating.Share my pain, people. Welcome to the bottom of the Irish journalistic barrel:Weekend Blend with Roisin Ingle is a lifestyle show that combines chat and fun, with a...

To some people, the concept of a dead tabloid journalist is a good thing.These people are usually the sort who 'take' the Irish Times at their desk each morning and think that McDowell's forthcoming censorship law, or privacy law as he calls it, is great because it'll stop people from rumbling their off-shore accounts and payments to Fianna Fail in future.To most right-thinking people, the idea that a journalist should die in the course of their work is abhorrent. It is a frontal attack on the nature of a free press, as well as a personal tragedy for a family.Hence, after Veronica Guerin's death, there was a stunning public outcry which led to the formation of the Criminal Assets Bureau and stringent new legislation relating to organised crime, as well as a massive manhunt for her...

How much do you hate lazy journalism? Do you hate it as much as me? Does it make your eyes bug out of your head in despair when completely lazy hacks cog stories and ask other people to do the work for which they get paid?If so, you'll not be surprised to know that one of the Irish mediaocracy's shining lights, the aforementioned Roisin Bu-, sorry Roisin Ingle, desperately needs your help to do her work for her!Yes, you too can be a completely forgotten, unpaid researcher for La Ingle, as she seeks to duck responsibility for sourcing her own bloody stories.Simply email her with suggestions for things she could do on Christmas day, via the linky above. Any suggestions you like. After all, she did ask for it. So give it to her, this once, for me.Consider it my Christmas......