The first thing that needs to be dispelled is that this is about anonymity. Like most bloggers who choose to use a pseudonym, as I originally did, Grog created a consistent persona that he presented via his blog and on twitter, which is nothing like the type of anonymous hit and run trolling that often shows up in comment threads. While the majority of his readers couldn’t tell you who Grog was there were a number who did know, including James Massola, so it’s fairly clear that he wasn’t actively trying to completely hide his identity. So then why use a pseudonym at all? I think that this is the key issue that many of the media professionals don’t understand and why so few of them have a problem with Massola’s decision to make Grog’s life a misery.

One of the reasons that so many bloggers choose to use a pseudonym is that when decide to start publishing their thoughts they have no idea what the consequences might be. Until you dive in you have no way of knowing whether your desire to start publishing will have an effect on your life, there’s no shortage of examples of people’s jobs being threatened or of people being stalked because they’ve written things online that someone disagrees with. When I began blogging my decision wasn’t about me wanting to avoid being held accountable for what I wrote, there were plenty of hints in my writing for people who may have known me in real life, but wanting to ensure that my wife, and especially my young children, wouldn’t end up being harassed by some random nutjob on the internet who’d taken a dislike to me. It was for this reason that the kids are always referred to by their nicknames, Buster Boy and the Troll Princess, and for a long time my wife Rach was simply known to my readers as Mrsdave.

There are plenty of other reasons for wanting to use a pseudonym too, it can be very difficult to discuss intensely personal topics openly if you have to operate under the assumption that someone could use it against you at a later date. For many people blogging provides one of the few outlets that they have to share their thoughts with other people in an open manner and it’s only by using a pseudonym that they can take advantage of this.

In Grog’s case it’s fairly obvious that he was using a pseudonym not so he could hide the fact that he was a public servant, in fact he referred to it more than once, but to ensure that the arguments that he made would not be used mischievously to undermine his professionalism as an impartial public servant. The things that Grog wrote about were all on the public record, which is in stark contrast to the journos who would deny him the ability to separate his professional and personal life, who regularly feel free to base their work on unnamed sources, so a pseudonym removes the angst of having to continually restate the boundaries between private opinion and professional life.

For a journalist this problem simply doesn’t exist, what they write is their professional life and the reality is that they strive for the chance to add their by-line to stories as it’s seen as a way of improving their professional capital. Journos are in some ways in an inverse reality to bloggers as they are rewarded for doing the type of writing that many bloggers fear they may be punished for, either professionally or socially. I think this is a big part of why so few of the journalists on twitter have had much sympathy for Grog and why they fail to understand the hostile reaction that so many people have had to this incident. I can’t imagine the anguish that Grog and his family must have felt when he found out that Massola was going to out him, even though he clearly believed that he was abiding by the APS code of conduct, how frightening must it have been to wonder whether or not this could end up with him costing his livelihood? This is something that most of the journalists do not seem to understand, or perhaps they simply do not care.

I eventually decided to blog under my own name when I began writing for Pure Poison because I figured that there was less chance of running into trouble compared to having people with nothing better to do spending their time trying to out me and pore over the details of my private life, however that was after more than two years of establishing this blog and getting a feel for what the consequences might be of using my own name. The critical thing is that I was able to make that decision at the time that suited me, as I’d seen Possum Comitatus and others do before me, which is completely different to having your details splashed across the pages of The Australian. Perhaps at some point Grog would have made the same decision, perhaps not, but it should have been his choice.

The excuse used by the Australian that Grog deserved to be exposed because he was influencing debate is pathetic, it was the strength of his argument that was making an impact, not who he was or what he does during business hours. It is telling that nowhere throughout this fiasco have the Australian engaged with any of Grog’s arguments, instead they have maliciously insinuated that he shouldn’t have the right to express himself because of his job as a public servant. The reality in this case is that pseudonyms provide the opportunity to speak truth to power and the traditional gate-keepers are unhappy. I think that there is also resentment coming from some of the professionals as they see amateurs and outsiders having more of an impact than they are in important circles.

If nothing else, most journos reaction to Grog being outed highlighted something that perhaps some of us had forgotten amongst all of the twitter banter over the last year and a half. Most professionals in the traditional media feel threatened by the emergence of new media contributors, they don’t see us as colleagues or as a resource to improve their own work but as competitors. They don’t understand why we want to contribute or why we chose to do so in the manner that we do, and they certainly don’t care if our participation ends up making our lives difficult. I think that the ABC’s Jonathan Green summed it up best

so folks just remember green’s golden rule of media: the journalist is not your friend.

It’s been a real challenge trying to write regular content for Pure Poison, having fairly well defined subject matter is a double edged sword. What is gratifying is building a rapport with so many commenters on the blog, especially when something I’ve written completely surprises them. It’s nice to be unpredictable.

The down side to contributing to Pure Poison is that this little blog has become a quiet place. Hopefully I’ll get the balance a bit better soon.

I’d run through a few ideas for posts over the past couple of days, but I’d let all of them go because I had been unable to publish them. I figured that I’d avoid being too confrontational as I eased my way into the team, but as fate would have it at almost the exact same time that I got posting rights a post popped up in my RSS reader from News Limited Blogger Tim Blair that I simply couldn’t let pass without comment. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Mr Blair, he’s been a feature of the Australian blogosphere for quite a few years now and has previously crossed swords with some of the other authors at Pure Poison. Because of that history I have to admit that I wasn’t planning on raising my head above the parapet to soon, but I set timidity aside and made a contribution that I hoped would be appropriate.

It turns out that was the easy part.

Unlike Dave from Albury’s Weblog, with a modest audience and a collegial group of commenters, Pure Poison is read widely and comes under much more scrutiny. As such, rather than having a free flow of comments and ad hoc intervention, each and every comment needs to pass through a moderation queue. Making the judgement call about which comments are or are not OK to publish really isn’t something I’d given a great deal of thought to, but it’s an important part of the process. Thankfully my cohorts were available to give me direction, giving me a bit more confidence to wade into the moderation process, and at the end of day one I think I’ve managed OK.

The challenge now, as always, is what to write next.

I’m actually quite humbled to have been invited to help pay their Crikey blogging fees join the guys in this venture. When I began this blog in 2007 it was because I felt that commenting on other blogs just didn’t give me the scope I wanted and that quite often authors had missed an angle that I felt was significant, so to now be asked to bring an additional perspective to a blog written by three people whose work I admire is a thrill. The opportunity to be exposed to a more diverse audience via the Crikey web-site is also something that I’m looking forward to, for better or worse.

I’d also like to thank those of you who have continued to read and comment here over the past few years, without the validation that your participation provided I may have given away these blasts into the ether a long time ago.

I’ll add a link to my Pure Poison posts on the sidebar (once I have some) and I hope that you’ll come along with me on this next step through the blogosphere.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to developments in the USA, the latest right-wing talking point is that if a government department is allowed to run health care it will lead to forced euthanasia of the sick and elderly as a cost saving measure. This is completely fabricated, of course, but it has evolved out of the argument that the government would have to ration health care because of cost constraints. What this argument completely ignores is that health insurance companies in the USA ration care every single day, purely in the name of corporate profit and shareholder value. The whole argument is little more than “government is bad and scary”, but it is the argument of choice at the moment anyway.

I personally believe that decent health care is a human right, and I can recall no shortage of appeals for Catholic aid organisations trying to build hospitals in 3rd world countries while I was at school, so I’m fairly sure that a Christian organisation would have no objection to the suggestion of improving care for millions of people. Apparently I was wrong.

The article on the CTFM site was nothing more than the right-wing ‘deather’ meme, and I was just about to close my browser tab when I decided to instead leave a quick comment. Nothing too argumentative mind you, I just copied and pasted two paragraphs from the article and replaced the term “government bureaucrat” with “Insurance Company worker”. The comment went up and I didn’t give it a second thought until today, when I decided to check back for a response. It had been deleted. So I posted it again. This time instead of the comment appearing straight away, I was informed that it had been placed in the moderation queue.

It seems that CTFM aren’t as interested in comments and discussion as they are in conformity.

Thanks to the team at Pure Poison, my take on Malcolm Colless’ special brand of crazy in today’s Australian can be read over there.

Naturally, the charge of groupthink is one that we vigourously deny. We are quick to point out that we are often in fierce disagreement over exactly what percentage of the beans in our lattes need to come from organic fair trade sources, how many minority groups need to be invited to a dinner party before it can proceed and what cultural icons of the right we should try to defile.

Sadly, however hard we try to divert attention from the truth that we all receive daily instructions from Al Gore coincidental similarities that we share, we cannot hide what everybody knows. Not only do Leftists all think the same, we’re even all starting to look the same.

Leftists? They all look the same to me.

The reality is that we’re really quite different. Scott has an Aluminium 13″ Macbook, I have a white 13″ Macbook. Scott wears white Dunlop Volleys, I wear blue and orange Dunlop Volleys. Scott always carries around a STM laptop satchel, I always carry a Crumpler laptop satchel. Scott writes in black hardcover Moleskine journals, I write in plain softcover Moleskine journals. Scott likes to ride a push bike, I like to ride a motorbike. Scott likes his espresso coffee with milk, I like my espresso coffee with another shot of espresso. You see? We couldn’t be more different.

The final nail in the coffin of this silly groupthink theory, however, is that I’m between seven and thirteen millimetres taller than Scott.

Let’s put aside for a second the fact that any website on the planet can easily stop google from accessing their content, which News has chosen not to do, and compare for a second News’ words and actions.

The most profitable sites, in fact the only ones making serious money are the sites that aggregate news, like Google and Yahoo.

They pay nothing for content produced by newspaper journalists but make money by supplying it in easily searchable forms online. – John Hartigan, National Press Club – July 1, 2009

The Australian - July 4th 2009

Somebody get that man in the expensive suit a facepalm, stat!

Obviously Google is a far superior product.