A blogging network?

The invaluable Richard North has gone off on a weekend ramble, taking swipes at any bloggers or eurosceptics who cross his path, not all of them justified. Luckily this little eurosceptic blog slips under his radar.

The eurosceptic community, he suggests, has a choice.

We can continue as we are, bleating from the sidelines in the hope that the media will somehow take pity on us and espouse our cause, thereby condemning ourselves to the continued failure to which we have become accustomed. Or we can do something positive. And, looking at it in the round, that means redirecting our fire.

He suggests the media are the biggest influence on politicians. Collectively, he suggests, bloggers "can claw back power from the media and challenge the assumption that it represents the public".

He sets out a plan of campaign.

Firstly, we can disagree with the media, challenge it publicly and make our disagreements known – known to the public of which we are part, and to the politicians who would otherwise believe that the media was speaking for us.

Secondly, we can challenge the veracity and accuracy of the media output, in so doing challenging its authority as the monopolistic purveyor of information and opinion. We can make it known that the MSM is but one source, not necessarily the best and certainly not one which can be relied upon.

Thirdly, we can provide alternative views and analyses, both on our own account and through our forums and comments sections, where our readers have their chance to air their opinions. We can also give a platform to politicians, thinkers and others, airing ideas and opinions that the MSM chooses to exclude – thereby again challenging its monopoly.

Fourthly, we ourselves can perform some of the basic functions of the media – providing news and analysis. Even with mainstream stories we can often do it faster and better and certainly – in respect of analysis – there are more experts out in the blogosphere than there are accessible to the media.

Bloggers can add to this by "writing up the stories which the MSM chooses not to follow. By so doing, we challenge the power of the media by not accepting its right to set the agenda. We write up and discuss the issues we think are important – not just those that the media sees fit to tell us about."

North suggests "this requires that there should be a wide range of blogs, loosely working to the same overall agenda, partaking in that informal alliance which has worked so successfully in the United States under the generic name of the 'blogosphere'".

Some American comments on his piece have criticised their country's media, as if ours were better. But it is not only in the US that bloggers have more influence than here - in France they have become a political phenomenon, though perhaps more in the area of ephemeral political gossip than North is looking for, which already attracts hits and comments on some UK blogs which North identifies.

One can only wish North well in his interesting endeavour. One wonders how many eurosceptic UK bloggers there are. Bloggers are also by their nature determinedly individualistic. Some will write what they want to write and hope that the hits will follow, others will follow the popular path of political gossip.

Is there a nascent community here? It will be interesting to see. As North rightly concludes, "democracy is not a spectator sport. You can have idleness or you can have democracy – you cannot have both".