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... but anything you do say will be used to inform the news, form general opinion and influence things in ways that have never been previously considered.

At least, that's the way things seem to be going. I've been quite bemused of late as broadcasters, newspapers and others have responded to the internet and the possibilities it affords by asking more and more people to form the content of their media. Examples abound everywhere — from the bbc's Have Your Say and the texting and emailing they ask for during their Breakfast programme, the Guardian's open-comment policy on Comment is Free, virtually all the content of the two free London evening papers and, more bizarrely (though creatively), Penguin book covers.

User-generated content is not new — letters pages to newspapers have been around since newspapers started. But therein lies the rub: the new user-generated content is, generally speaking, pretty awful and no one bats an eyelid about it. For example, Have Your Say and the letters / comments pages of, say, the Guardian / Comment is Free, is full of complete, and sometimes scary, rubbish. There used to be a time when writing a letter to the Times, for example, was a measure of an individual's class. Now, all you have to do is "txt" a 180-character-or-less opinion on something and you'll get your name in print (I've pointed out a couple of such things before). I'm not saying the Times way was better, but am using it as an admittedly old-fashioned example to reinforce my point point.

Now, I can't stand all this new user-generated rubbish — it is, in my view, and as you can see from my choice of words thus far, rubbish. But others like it and can, and apparently do, read it. Fair enough. But the move to this form of media has come about primarily because of the internet and the traditional media's response to it.

This post was prompted into being by norm, who hints at some of the issues above in discussing an argument over book reviewing. In that argument, "real" critics are moaning that people with blogs are also reviewing, but that these reviews are crap. Well, they certainly might be, but, and as norm points out, that is neither here nor there — people can take it or leave it. But my wider point is that, as the traditional media tries almost too hard to make its readers' voices heard, it is giving less space both to facts and those who are qualified to offer their opinions.

I'm not so fussed about the second, because I can find people whose opinions I respect and trust wherever I want; but I do want more news and not this constant desire to make everyone feel like they are contributing in some way. I suspect I'll be criticised for expressing such a notion; but there it is anyway.

Tags — General Interest