It\u2019s been almost two months since I announced I would be posting fewer Cog Blogs. It was very gratifying to receive so many notes of support for the Cog Blog; thanks to everyone for the kind words and encouragement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fewer, better, is the idea and so here we go again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
This is the first of the less frequent Cog Blog posts. It takes as inspiration a visit I made to the Byline Festival in Devon in mid-July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am a supporter of Byline \u2013 an investigative site and newspaper and home to some of the best journalism around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before anyone has a go \u2013 Byline does not accept advertising so what follows is in no way an ad sales pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The highlight of the festival for me was their Editor-in-Chief, Peter Jukes\u2019 on-stage discussion with the journalist Carole Cadwalladr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For those unfamiliar with Carole, she is best known for exposing the misdemeanours of Cambridge Analytica, and their use of Facebook data to target messages during the 2016 UK Brexit Referendum campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, Carole has been subjected to all kinds of personal and professional abuse and attacks (in the Courts as well as in social media). These have come from all sorts of people, some of whom (like the ex-editor of \u2018The Sunday Times\u2019, a newspaper once renowned under a previous editor, the great Harry Evans for its investigative work) you would like to think would understand the value of open journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The point of this is not to enter into some paeon of praise for Ms Cadwalladr but to point out the single-mindedness of the work she does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You may not agree with Carole who, alongside others, including in our world Bob Hoffman, is concerned at the detrimental effect that social media forms have on open-minded debate and democracy, but agree or not I think we should listen to what media-people-who-are-not-advertising-media-people have to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is easy for an advertiser to justify spending money with the giant online platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The arguments are clear. Yes, there\u2019s a huge audience (even if not quite as huge as some have claimed \u2013 given past boasts of reaching more individuals in some demographics than actually exist); yes, it\u2019s easy to do (give them the money and they\u2019ll sort out the mucky details for you); and yes, there\u2019s peer pressure (\u2018that\u2019s what my competitors are doing. I can\u2019t afford not to be there\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n