My colleague Emily just dropped a few of us an e-mail with a link to this travel blog on The Guardian's website:Hello. I'm Max Gogarty. I'm 19 and live on top of a hill in north London.The Guardian's commenteriat are less than delighted by his inclusion. Their responses range from "who's son is max then?" through "He looks like a cliche, talks like a cliche, and is about to embark on a monumental cliche" to "Deleted by moderator", which proves that what's left is less unpleasant end of the reaction.
At the minute, I'm working in a restaurant with a bunch of lovely, funny people; writing a play; writing bits for Skins; spending any sort of money I earn on food and skinny jeans, and drinking my way to a financially blighted two-month trip to India and Thailand. Clichéd I know, but clichés are there for a reason.
The editor who commissioned him eventually posts a response, and 'fesses up to Max being the son of one of their travel writers. However, it does little to moderate the flow of invective, some of it very funny.
However, now I've got through the juvenile (but strangely cathartic) sniggering stage, it's worth pointing out that this is another indication that blogs from mainstream publishers are held to vastly different standards than the rest of the blogosphere. If this was just Max's blog on, say, Vox or Wordpress.com, it would just be ignored. But somehow that endorsement of The Guardian puts it to another level, and people expect a higher quality of blogging. And that puts a little crack in the argument that existing brand reputation doesn't translate into the blogging world...
Update: Travel Weekly takes up the tale...
I think we do rightly demand a high standard, but mostly its just a wider readership - and one most of us bloggers would kill for.
As bloggers they are blessed with readers - it's their own hard luck if they abuse that with crap like this.
Very very funny though.
Not sure about the last bit. If you look beyond the first few posts, most comments are attacking the Guardian's editorial policy (it's employed the son of one of its journos) and its hypocrisy (it's employed a spoilt little rich kid when it's supposed to be a progressive paper). It certainly shows how easy it is to damage a brand with bad blogs and other badly thought-through product extensions, however. Not least because posters can and will point up every bit of bad faith.
Wow, I'm amazed at the restraint of the moderators. I tend to go by the 'living room' rule for comments and much of what was said would not be tolerated. The points are valid, but there's a whole bunch of trolls there who need to work on how they say it.
Deary dear... It's not a joke, The Guardian are just about intelligent enough to be able to make a funny joke. I think this more about the tabloidisation of that paper and about the tablodisation of the British middles classes, IMHO :)
Lyn - that was the point I was trying (and clearly failing) to make. The wider blog-reading world demands more of national newspaper blogs than self-created and run ones, despite the fact that both are free to the reader...
I think the fact that it's a blog in name alone also makes a difference. As it is, it's basically a traditional column - weekly piece, big byline pic, no obligation to respond to commenters.
Imagine it's the real thing. His first post would still have sucked (though maybe not quite as badly - he was almost perceptibly struggling to meet a word count, which wouldn't have been imposed on a genuine blog) but it would quickly have been replaced by another, so there wouldn't have been a sole point of focus for nastiness. He could also have modified his style in response to the initial comments.
Basically the travel ed told a teenager to write 600 words on a trip he hasn't taken yet, called it a blog and opened it up to commenters - without giving the writer the tools to tackle the inevitable feedback.
Emily Bell got involved too, by the way:
http://tinyurl.com/2yg2br
Great Post