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So last night I knew a couple of friends were going to be on Media Watch. For overseas readers Media Watch is a weekly 1/2hr program which analyses media in Australia. If you are a journalist you do not want to be on Media Watch. I remember quite soon after leaving uni a classmate of mine was featured after covering an aeroplane crash with the line, “It’s an all too familiar story, planes go up, dead bodies come down”. He now works on 60 Minutes in the US so it didn’t totally destroy his career.

I knew those friends were going to be on it because I told them not to do it. That nothing good comes from being on Media Watch. They basically hang you out to dry. Granted it is often warranted – sloppy journalism deserves to be outed at any chance. But what was their angle going to be on blogging and most importantly why were they doing a story on it in the first place?

I felt sick for what could possibly be to come for them as I heard the intro music. Condescension? Ridicule? And then almost lost my breakfast lunch and tea as my head and voice filled the screen.

The video of the segment can be watched or the transcript read here.

I’m still not sure what the point of it was, for Media Watch it was pretty beige. A shot across the bow that bloggers are now on its radar? Who knows. The voice-overs were horribly condescending but apart from that we all walked away relatively unscathed.

I will say though, I was quoted saying my unique hits were “around 20,000” which at the time they were, fluctuating between 17,500 to 21,000 over a 3 month period at the time of the 2GB interview. After the last few months of not blogging virtually every day of the week at the moment it’s sitting on 13,000.

So there you have it.

Onward!