'Bloggers do not have original thought between them'

Waterhouse takes a pop at 'Googlers' too

By Tech Digest • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 5th October 2006 12:34 GMT

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Tech Digest Oh how I love the Daily Mail. What a splendid newspaper. No, really. Its online offering is now very good to the point where a US-exiled liberal friend of mine confessed to me the other day that after the Gruniard, it is his first online stop for UK news.

If the Fleet St gossip is right too, the Mail's site is really starting to take off and could well become one of the biggest UK online portals.

So the paper does itself no favours when it lets its columnists write stuff like this. Yep, Keith Waterhouse, a man who is guaranteed a place in heaven for penning the wonderful Billy Liar, has had a pop at Googlers (whatever they might be) and Bloggers who he argues don't have an original thought between them.

Mmm, odd that, when there is a great deal of talk in PR circles about how blogging is setting the news agenda and it is national newspapers who are pinching all the blogger's stories.

Another priceless classic is: "They never acknowledge original authorship, believing as they do that googling has outmoded the law of copyright."

Which paper do you write for Keith? Is it the Daily Mail which very rarely links to stories on other sites yet quite happily claims them as its own?

Like the story it ran the other day on the Fembot for sale on eBay - a story which first appeared on our blog Bayraider and was the result of our journo spending hours trawling the site looking for goodies.

Ultimately, with Keith it boils down to the fact that the number of people who are interested in his tablets delivered from on high, is dwindling.

Personally, I prefer to read opinions that aren't just ill-informed rants (which ironically he says is true of bloggers). But Keith, everyone has a right to an opinion, even you.

Ashley Norris is creative director of Shiny Media, and publisher of blogs like Brandish and Tech Digest.

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