Guardian's live Countdown blog-digital journalism in danger of being a parody of itself

The live blog on the Guardian website yesterday attracted a fair amount of criticism across the journalistic twittersphere.

The Guardian had decided in its infinite wisdom that Nick Hewer taking over hosting duties at Countdown was such a significant event that it required a live commentary.

But has digital reporting taken a step too far?

Now I applaud many things that the Guardian does as many readers of this blog and those that follow my twitter stream know.

However the danger to me is that the organisation,and it is not on its own, is being slowly taken over by the good intentions of journalists who have been schooled in the idea that the many tools of this digital age are the salvation of the profession whilst forgetting who they are actually trying to connect with.

Yes,live blogging as one such too has demonstrated its usefulness but yesterday's choice of event to me endangers it to being a parody of itself.

As a tongue in cheek Mike Rawlins of Talk about local tweeted to me earlier on the very subject

" Next time I see a live blog like that I think I'll live blog the live blog, hopefully someone will live tweet the....."


There is a danger that journalism and journalists spend far too much time navel gazing and forget whom their real audience is,Ready to jump on tweet and blog about about what they consider the next best thing which will come to their salvation,be it data journalism,geotagging,cover it live and whatever the next dreamed up hashtag will be(anyone remember Quora which was going to solve all our problems?)

Meanwhile the Leveson enquiry continues to rumble on.In much the same way as the Countdown blog,it is in danger of becoming a navel gazing exercise.Covered in depth by the Guardian and the Independent,I speculate on whether anyone outside the profession is really that interested in its outcome.

Indeed by the time it reports,the heady days of last summer when we actually thought the world was going to change will be long forgotten to be replaced by,well who knows?

So as I prepare to live blog my expedition to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and some toast,here is an appeal to some in the journalism community-get real please.