Blogging. The Next Generation

I began this blog seven years ago, though a version of it existed before then. The years between 2000 and 2010 have seen some very short lived blogs, some very controversial blogs and some very self-referential blogs. Almost all of them, including mine, have been limited by the amount of time and resources we can expend on them and the amount of traffic we generate. There are some exceptions, but even some of the big hitters have packed it in. It is not that high volume traffic is good on its own. It is not. Anybody can generate hits. What the blogger lacked, and this was always going to be a disabling factor, is resources. Blogger fatigue is not unknown. It is simply impossible to create a blog that combines accuracy, interest, content, immediacy and reader loyalty on any scale that would compete with the MSM. And there is the rub. Some of us want to compete with the MSM. It is one of the reasons I do it. Let me get this straight, it is not an ego trip, it is a very deep-rooted desire to promote a new agenda in media. It is also not an alternative, but a brand new type of mass communication that is beholden to no one.

More importantly, one of its intrinsic components is interaction between the reader and the writer. This is not merely a "comment is free/have your say" interaction (which by the way is heavily censored and moderated) but the kind of engagement you get in the theatre; the readers are part of the building, the fourth wall as the luvvies put it. In essence, the readers become part of the actual discourse. It is something I have hoped for on this blog but sadly, very few readers understood this. Some of you have criticised me for not responding to every comment. My hope was, and this never happened, was that you would talk amongst yourselves while I got on with the actual work of researching, writing and checking and thinking. I do not blame anybody. But a handful of loyal readers do not a movement make. To those who "got it", I thank you, for it gave me hope.

Let us be frank, the Fourth Estate has let us down. By anybody's standards, the Main Stream Media have failed to be a "fourth estate" and are now merely a loose confederacy of organs who broadly conform to the status quo. They are far too close to the ruling elites for comfort. Not only that, their professional standards are woeful. What is needed is a new approach, one that rekindles the aims and purpose of what the media used to be, but with something more. I understand the media, I trained in it and worked in it at the highest levels. It has become an embarrasment and a travesty of the truth. Blogging is a de facto admission that the MSM has failed.

Blogging was in its infancy and needed to find its way. Over and above the reasons given, many have moved on, and it is my intention to also move on.

Yes, Wrinkled Weasel is going to end.

However, what I do and have been doing is not going to end. None of what I have said is taken back. I am not going to work for the MSM and I am not going to turn this into a platform for promoting Weasel plc or my own branded Mugs and T shirts. And I am not doing a strop or going out in a huff,

The writer of this blog has been offered, and accepted an equal partnership with an online magazine, or if you like, an online pub, that is already part of the second generation of what we used to call a blog.

I shall still do all the WW posts (but not as WW). You will still get the kind of material that has made this a blog that people like, which is why, quite out of the blue, I was approached to join someone who can reach out to a lot more people than I ever did. Not only that, I shall be able to commit a lot more time and energy and, importantly, I shall have the resources to take on the MSM at their own game and bloody well throttle them.

Sooner or later, what I am doing will become common knowledge among the bloggerati, but for now, keep it under your hat.

Thank you and may your blog go with you.