ThoughtfulChaos

I don't know where to begin so I will just begin.

Delhi Blogger's Meet was on 6th of November. In all 4+1 people turned up. 4 (Aanchal, River (nice name!), Saket and Tarun) bloggers and 1 undercover reporter (believe it or not 'James') from TOI.

James posed as a newbie to blogs and asked newbie-ish questions. No problem with that.

The problem began when an article by James titled Blogged down? appeared in Delhi Times on the 9th of November. Before you read further please go and read the article.

The article is poor journalism. After reading the article I got the impression that the journalist in question had already made up his mind about what to write and simply used the Delhi Blogger's Meet as an excuse. It is indeed badly written, unfocused and full of half-truths and white lies.

Reading the article and a blog post allegedly by the article's author brought upon me the desire to do some serious fisking. And that is what I am going to do.

Snippets from the article are in italics and my observations follow it. I will continue calling the author of the article James. I am not sure if it is his real name.

James:the active blogging community in India is a shockingly tiny group
So? It just might be a tiny group. What difference does that make? Btw do you have a number to go along with that claim? You have mentioned a survey about Blogging in India later on... could you please give more details about that?

James:Their preoccupation nevertheless continues to be slamming and analyzing a very wide variety of things in an attempt to display their intellectual might.
Blogs are about opinions, blogs are about what the author thinks, blogs are about their take on something. You are just playing with words and trying to make it sound negative when you call it 'slamming' and 'display of intellectual might'. Whats wrong with criticism and intellectual debate? And has it never occurred to you that you yourself (in this article of yours) are indulging in what you have accused us of doing?

James:If anything was in dispute, the 3rd annual Delhi bloggers meet just proved how big (or small) is the Indian blogosphere. Just four bloggers attended it, counting the host.
Anybody who has ever participated in a voluntary social activity knows how difficult it is to get people to come to an actual event. Main reasons being laziness, scheduling problems and disinterest. The fact that only 4 bloggers came to the meeting does in no way indicate the size of the Indian blogosphere. I fail to see how you could extrapolate the number of bloggers attending a meeting in Delhi to the number of bloggers in the entire Indian blogosphere. In fact a large number of bloggers I read live outside India and would simply be unable to attend such a meeting.

James:Like Tarun, half of the Indian bloggers are IT professionals, while three-fourths of them live in the metros, according to a survey.
Please give me more details about the survey.

James:As a result, the focus of the Indian bloggers is fairly limited.
I have been a hardcore blogtrawler since 9 months. And I have read posts that range from wonder at why frogs are not croaking to some excellent arm-chair detective work. Blogs are the platform not the content. The blog author can use the platform to speak about what she want. It could be personal diary, a catalog of good websites, a list of recipes... basically anything. So how can the focus be limited?

James:As Sajan Venniyoor wrote in a media watchdog site, ‘‘If blogs are to be taken seriously as an alternative medium, they should measure up to the standards of accountability and reliability of the mainstream media that the bloggers so deplore. When the IT Act 2000 comes into force, bloggers will face bigger challenges.’’
You ask us to raise our 'standards of accountability and reliability'. They why the hell are you hellbent on going as low as possible? Is this your misguided attempt at lowering those standards so that it becomes easier for us to reach it? If you do this often enough there will no longer be any standards to speak of.

James:‘We are the elite bloggers of India,’’ announced Tarun, as Aanchal and Neha, who showed up later, nodded in agreement.
Wah wah, wah wah! If he really said (I don't think he did) this I am wondering why you didn't fall off your chair (or was it a sofa) laughing?

James:No one posed the question, at least not yet: When can we have our own Dan Rather moment, where bloggers forced a prominent US journalist to resign by proving that his stories were false?
Aah... we finally and thankfully come to the conclusion. The conclusion itself speaks a lot about how you view the blogosphere... you may deny it but it is you who views the whole thing as MSM vs. Bloggers.

And by the way who is that lady at the bottom of your article?

I still don't understand the title of your article. It sure is a nice play of words but how is it relevant to the ensuing article? And I still don't understand why (*James Bond theme in the background*) you had to go undercover (now I am falling off my chair!) to do research about your article.

If you thought that this was the end of my post I am extremely sorry to disappoint you. As I have said before I am in the mood for some serious fisking... and how could I let this fisker's delight go by?

A disclaimer is in order. There is no proof that the author of BlogsWatch is indeed the James of the newspaper article fame. I will assume that the 2 authors are different and BloggerWatch just posted the article as flamebait. Frankly the post sounds too provocative to be from the author of the article. Ideally I should not be biting this but I can't resist...

BloggerWatch: It would have been perfectly okay if Tarun and his pals were to organize some get-together by any other name, say 4 ramblers meet or even elite bloggers meet. But as a blogger, I have a problem, so would any self-respecting blogger, if a group of non-entities arrogate to themselves the authority to convene a bloggers meet that pretended to represent all us Delhi-based bloggers – 3rd Delhi Bloggers’ Meet.
Okay please enlighten us on who has the authority to organize the Delhi Blogger's Meet? Just in case you have not noticed blogs do not have a central figure or group controlling them. Such activities have to be voluntary... there is no other way. I am a self-respecting blogger (will anybody ever say that s/he is NOT a self-respecting person?) and I don't see a problem. All self-respecting bloggers (especially Delhi based) please raise your hands... Dear BloggerWatch, please think about what I am going to say very carefully... if (Delhi-based) bloggers indeed had a problem with Tarun (and the rest of the gang) they would have blogswarmed and you would be seeing posts denouncing the same all over the place. But that does not seem to be happening... In fact the exact opposite seems to be happening. Hmmm... I wonder what that means?

BloggerWatch: Too high-sounding words anyway.
Very hypocritical of a person who grandiosely calls himself (/herself) BloggerWatch and who names his(/her) blog BlogWatch.

BloggerWatch: I wanted to expose that, and obviously in any undercover operation (MSM term, I am not sure how many non-journos would know that), the victims are not likely to be happy at the end.
OMG! So you wanted to expose what you had already decided was true... And yaar I am generally not very pedantic about these things but 'undercover' is a very common English word... really... I am not kidding.

BloggerWatch: Third, I take strong exception to racist comments that cast aspersions over the competency of my community. How dare a Manipuri do it? Is that what you are thinking, Saket?
Baap re baap. Now you are really getting my goat (phrase picked up from the Blogosphere :-) ). When did Saket ever say that? Nice attempt but you fail miserably.

BloggerWatch: Fourth, some have dug out my past stories on technology and questioned its accuracy, citing Wikipedia as the bible of authoritativeness.
Does this mean that you are claiming to be Ranjan Yumnam? You are indulging in sophism of the most easily detectable type. Potential problems with Wikipedia have absolutely no relevance to the fact that the author of the article (mentioned in this post) has no idea about what he is talking about.

BloggerWatch: Nor this is my rant against bloggers (remember I am a blogger too). The story I did was about exposing a group of people with big time pretensions.
A rant is a rant is a rant. The story just begins with the Delhi Blogger's Meet and then totally goes haywire and writes what not. I don't know what it is but it definitely is not about 'exposing a group of people with big time pretensions'.

Whew! Now I am really tired and famished.

But if you are in the mood for some more controversy go read these

1. Few bloggers in India!!?? You’re going pathetic to comical, The Times of India!
2. Betrayed
3. "TOI Lying" – ‘Elite blogger’ livid over its report on him
4. Betrayed (by your own kind)

A veritable streetfight. Personally I think that Tarun/TTG did go a little overboard with his language. Of course it is his blog and all that but maybe a more civil post would have had a better effect. However he has retracted some of the more dangerous sounding parts of his post and that is a nice gesture. As far as IndiaDaily is concerned I think that Mr. Jonty B is just out to get some cheap publicity and deliberately making provoking statements.

A note to IndiaDaily (and InstaBlogs): People have written many not-so-nice things and some nice things about you. Your reputation has already taken a hit and maybe you should tread with more caution. Frankly I think that InstaBlogs shows lot of promise and I like some of the blogs in your network but I am sorely disappointed by some of the posts that appear on your blogs. Especially the posts about this Delhi Blogger's Meet controversy.

Note to regular readers: In case you are wondering why I had gone underground let me just say that it was a temporary case of Blogger's Block plus a trip home. I had gone home for a week and I didn't as much as see a computer (except for the computers at the railway reservation counters). A regular post will follow tomorrow. Promise.

And sorry about the title of the post. I am just too tired and hungry right now.

(2005-11-11) Minor Correction: Changed 'BloggerWatch' to 'BlogsWatch' in a paragraph above.