If the newbie say something that finds favour with the great and the good they’re hailed, praised and linked to. If on the other hand the noob draws on their bad side the megaphone and plinth are used it to drown them out, moderate out their comments on the qt etc. If the newbie doesn’t disappear from the square the exalted can always just make up stories about how they’re being stalked, harassed and wait for their cheerleaders to turn into a lynch mob. It’s the web 2.0 way!

If the Irish blogging scene is a community, then it’s that town in Footloose where everyone stays on the right side of John Lithgow’s preacher character. And I’m no Kevin Bacon, not even a bad Chris Penn on my good days.

Wouldn’t you love to see a political reporter saying “well what Fianna Fáil aren’t telling you in this story is that …” or “of course this is the same Minister that.”

In fairness, that’s what the likes of Fionnan Sheehan (pol editor of the Indo) does at least once or twice a week — often in front page news stories (I don’t have the links but check it out). Any further editorialising and he’d be accused of going tabloid (he often is, anyway).

Ultimately, though, being a columnist can be easy: manufacturing opinion is definitely easy. Finding something out is hard and takes much more skill. It often takes gut-turning plamas, revolting sycophancy or cold cruelty. We had a guy a couple of years ago who was our crime reporter and the lengths he used to go to were truly incredible. But he got new information and found things out. And it was his information which columnists then relied on to sit back over a cappucino and opine upon. (Of course, there’s definitely a place for that.)

Okay, I take your point on the availability of opinion diversity on Irish blogs. They’re just way harder to find and seem to pop up far more randomly in disparate places i.e. not reliably in one place.

But yeah, that’s for columinsts not journalists who as I said are just reporting on matters and have had all their personality beaten or edited out. There’s space for pure “just the facts, none of the soul” but I do think that there should be more columnists. Way way more. Wouldn’t you love to see a political reporter saying “well what Fianna Fáil aren’t telling you in this story is that …” or “of course this is the same Minister that.”

You’ll get that in blogs.

For Myers, how about JC Skinner on Abortion? Not as talented as Myers but representative of the opinion of many. And unlike Myers he engaged in the comments with people too.

There are more extreme views of Myers too like Hibernia Girl and the Irish Savant or whatever he’s called.

Do searches for various topics that a newspaper covers and you’ll probably find independent thoughts on them in a search on IrishBlogs.ie