Joe Saward of GrandPrix dot com established the talking point of the blogosphere last week when he posted an article entitled A load of rubbish on his personal blog. He was decrying the tendency for rumors and nonsense being published on the net under the guise of F1 news and pointing out that this endangers the position of those who have genuine access to the sport and make sure that their stories have a basis in truth.
Well, we haven't had one of those wonderfully atmospheric shots from Renault for a while...
That may well be so but I was a bit annoyed by Joe's all-encompassing first paragraph: "The Internet is filled with instant experts about Formula 1. I browse the web to see what is happening and I am amazed that there are so many people who claim to know so much and have such virulent opinions - when they have never been seen inside a Formula 1 paddock." That sounded to me like an attack on F1 bloggers and I wrote a brief comment in their defense, only to have it moderated out of existence. It was superfluous to requirements anyway, Keith Collantine having already pointed at the unfairness of Joe's blanket condemnation, but I admit it rankled at the time.
Alianora has gone some way towards easing the bloggers' hurt feelings with her post Apologies and How Blogs and News Can Co-Exist in which she defines some boundaries between news sites and blogs. She mentions GMM as being criticized repeatedly for its news feed and I have no doubt that F1-Live, which relies heavily on GMMF1 stories for its content, is the kind of site Joe is really having a go at.
GMMF1 is a site that supplies daily news snippets, essentially operating as a collating house for information from all sorts of original sources. As such, it deals with rumor, newspaper articles and team press releases which it then presents in abbreviated form. Many of its articles turn out to be sheer nonsense but, almost invariably, these originate in the traditional media - newspapers and magazines that habitually publish speculation and guesswork. Since GMMF1 always indicate their sources, readers become accustomed to taking anything from certain publications with a large pinch of salt and no real harm is done.
That is a point often ignored in these debates over the value of internet treatment of F1 information; that the vast majority of false stories and rumors originate in the traditional media. The classic example is BusinessF1's story on Michael Schumacher's retirement; it is a wonderful construction, purporting to have deep inside knowledge and yet really an intelligent deduction from a few facts combined with creative speculation. Many are the impassioned debates it has supported in F1 forums for years afterwards and it still crops up today as the ultimate authority for a bit of Ferrari-bashing.
That article was the work of Tom Rubython, a man who has become known for the number of libel cases he has defended and lost. It was not the product of an internet news site or F1 blogger - indeed, there are few net writers who could approach its imagination and glorious range. Say what you will about Tom, he was an extraordinarily gifted journalist and was not one to let the minor matter of truth stand in his way!
The point is really that access to the F1 paddock does not automatically confer upon a writer the status of infallibility. Even Joe has sometimes been wrong because a trusted source claimed more inside knowledge than actually existed. Those who are in the business of passing on news and forming opinion on what is revealed in F1 are heavily dependent upon the reporters who have first hand access but that is no reason to despise them.
As long as rumor is presented as such and sources given, the internet provides a useful service to a readership that is hungry for detail on the F1 scene. If there are some sites that claim more authenticity than is due, they should be treated with caution, yes, but they are rare in my own humble experience.
And besides, rumor and speculation are part of the fun of F1. Readers generally understand this and, through the blogs, can add their thoughts to the discussion. Having become a blogger himself, Mr Saward is now able to add his perspective to the mix and, quite rightly, he is treated with respect by the rest of the F1 blogosphere; his experience and contacts give him an advantage in credibility, after all. But his fear that internet news sites will put him out of a job is ill-founded.
Specialist magazines may be suffering from competition from the net but they will never disappear altogether. Those who read news sites and blogs still buy the magazines and will continue to do so. As has been said in many blog posts on the subject, there is a reality and solidity to the printed word that the net can never supply; just a glance at how many proud collections of back issues there are out there should reassure us on that.
So be kind to us mere bloggers, Joe. We deal in opinion only and make no great claims to insider knowledge or deeper truth. We're just telling it the way we see it and, although we get it wrong sometimes, there are occasions when we are right and traditional journalists wrong. It is not about being right or wrong anyway - just a matter of saying what we think and letting others have their say too.