I suspect that the obituary of Slugger O’Toole will be written soon.
It should be sad to see an old friend dying on his feet…but sympathy is eroded when the dying person acts erratically and even viciously towards those who actually care for him.
Slugger was born in the hype of the “citizen journalist” craze when many bloggers thought of themselves in the same light as the Baghdad Blogger. Slugger was very much part of “that moment” and received much credit in the media.
I myself was an irregular commenter (sic) off and on in the glory years. I used several noms de guerres not because, I was a “sock puppet” but rather because my irregular appearances meant that I rarely remembered my log in details.
In January 2010, I became a regular. Slugger has (hopefully its a coincidence) gone downhill. …and the race to the bottom has actually accelerated in the past few weeks.
It was of course always the case that Slugger O’Toole had a coterie of core members and commenters who affected to despise the politics that they were discussing. They were too posh for the squalid nature of Norn Iron’s politics. I dubbed them The Overclass.
Frankly Slugger over-relied on the over-rated analytical skills of one or two contributors. And was too often a mutual admiration society. Actually pointing out the absurdity of it all was not tolerated.
Amusingly when I was registered for about six months, an Alliance Party member described me…outed me (as it were) as a “failed SDLP politician in North Belfast”. Amused but stunned (as I had not knowingly thought of myself as a SDLP supporter or politician) I assumed that the contributor thought I was Martin Morgan. I am not of course suggesting that Martin is a failure…….just that was who I thought they meant.
Sometime later, the same Alliance contributor seemed quite annoyed and wrote that he had been brought up reading my columns in the Irish News. Ah………not Martin Morgan. The obvious conclusion was that I was journalist and former SDLP man, Brian Feeney. Of course I should probably have denied it. But it was too good to miss. Especially when another Sluggerite……..himself in the wider freemasonry of journalism……..directly appealed to me as “Brian” that I was letting myself down by posting anonymously.
Ah well. Routinely the Alliance contributors assumed I was Brian Feeney.
I think the great problem with Slugger is that it denies it has an agenda. It does of course. The tie-in with Strategem ensures that. There is an orthodoxy. There are stories that Slugger should cover………the Northern Ireland Assembly Business Trust. And the role of “lobbying” in Norn Iron. And there is a default position that favours “lets get alongerists” (not necessarily the Alliance Party) from Platform for Change, the integrated school movement, “normal” (British) politics, conflict resolution and the like.
Frankly Slugger has favourites while purporting not to have favourites. It has obsessions. Regular but totally irrelevant “Space” threads. The redeeming feature of Slugger is not its core team, including the resident Rottweiler and self loathing troll or a referee who somehow thinks of himself as neutral…….no the redeeming feature is a group of commenters not fully committed to the Slugger programme who take it all with a pinch of salt……rather than the preening self regard of Slugger pomposity. The most inspiring thing about the unofficial opposition is that they……we are diverse in our politics. We are a genuinely cross community group.
Can Slugger O’Toole survive? Well I hope so. But I fear not. Twitter and Facebook were not around ten years ago and those of us disenchanted with the unbalanced use of “moderation” (sic) have learned that we can easily set up our own gaffs with our own rules, while contributing to Slugger and keeping within the guidelines there.
That Slugger O’Toole has contributed to the discourse in Norn Iron is without doubt. That it can continue to do so is in serious doubt.
To misquote my favourite journalist, Peter Spencer (Sky News) it is not drink that is the downfall of journalists………it is their own sense of self importance.
Likewise for Bloggers.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
Ever since the Gutenberg press and possibly before anyone who puts pen to paper has had an agenda.
Slugger is the best in its field, it was born at a time of great headlines. If its facing difficulty now its the difficulty of finding something worth writing about among the mountains of mediocrity in the north and the south of the island.
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Anyway who could possibly beat Pete Baker at getting republicans foaming at the mouth?
What have twitter and facebook to do with anything?
I think it is certainly true that there is nothing to write about in terms of major stories. The current obsession with Scotland being a case in point……..I expect the name of the site to be changed from “Slugger O’Toole……drunk as a rule” to “Rab C Nesbitt…..drunk as a rule”. But just as the Daily Express always manages to find a story about “Princess Diana” and the Daily Mail finds stories about “migrants taking jobs”, Slugger has a set of obsessions which demean it.
Well the point about Twitter and Facebook and indeed individual “journals” is that they undermine the novelty value that Slugger once had.
I would not of course name individuals who post on Slugger. I think that would be both unfair and give them the oxygen of publicity that they crave. I would make the general point that posting comments with the hope of making republicans or indeed loyalists froth at the mouth is not exactly grown up. It is the politcs of the troll……about which a Slugger referee would get himself/herself all worked up into pomposity. There are different rules for the “posters” and another for “commenters”…….the posturing of some demeans them.
Sluggers Wikipedia entry suggests that it is read by the political class. I think this is true but to a much lesser extent than it once was. In the last eighteen months I have met many politicians (not necessarily SDLP) and they are scathing or pretend to be scathing. The recurring theme is that “I used to read it” but of course thats probably not to be taken at face value. But I think the increase in web sites/twitter/facebook etc means politicians dont actually need to read a Slugger-type site. They can get their fix of reassurance from friendly sites.
Certainly I have attended two direct Slugger events and a few indirect ones and there is little chance of seeing a real live politician.
What exactly was the reason that the Slugger Political Awards were quietly dropped at the end of last year when once it had been part of the Norn Iron political calendar. Essentially its just a site run by anoraks……for other anoraks.
It has pretensions about itself.
As I openly state on this site, I have no delusions that anything I say has any import at all.
I doubt there are many commenters who have illusions of self importance either. The thing about headlines is surely to grab the attention and motivate someone to say something. I freely admit that I have very strong views about murdering thugs posturing as politicians. Its not so much that they may have murdered British people, or even that loyalists murdered Irish people. My anger is greatest and directed at those who murdered and intimidated the people they were supposed to represent – Irish people.
Politicians are showbiz! You’re unlikely to find them with a ‘sure’ thing, they are far more likely to be out there ‘treading the boards’ or attending showbiz events, I bet they were all at the recent music awards in Belfast, and what more could you expect, especially in the north where very few have reached even the level of the average politician anywhere else. The heady days of the peace process and its aftermath are gone. Most of the time its politics as usual and frankly politics is not the politicians in the north strong suit. Who wants to go to an award and not be mentioned? Surely the real test is readership numbers. I wonder how many people or politicians (a lesser breed) sing the praises of any newspaper or political debating program on tv or radio.
Do you know what I would like to see? a political/current affairs show on TG4 switching naturally between English and Irish, the way the languages should be here. I think there is room for that but perhaps neither real familiarity with the Irish language among most of our politicians or hosts.
Blogs have got to diversify to survive in a relatively peaceful environment and there is room.
It seems to me that most bloggers are academics and such diversification may not appeal to them. I must have been quite unusual…