it was particularly telling when to my mind Maconie's books need just that a good editor.
I think it's just another aspect of the press not coming to terms with the web it's like all the jokes about wikipedia being full of mistakes, you know like the faultless mistake free media.

Also blogs etc that are worth reading are subject to revision in at the hands of the reading public. If you end up at a post which is several 100 words of unedited badly spelt rant you probably click away. If however it's snappy well written, informed and insightful you'll probably tweet it to your mates. So people do learn to write better, well the preceptive bloggers who want an audience do.

Part of the vitality of blogging/posting is the immediacy , it's first thought best thought , it's no use coming up with your two pennth on Michael Jackson's death three weeks after the event on a web forum.

This isn't to dismiss learning your trade etc just that the world that Stuart entered no longer exist in the way that it was.

I can't find that in the dictionary. Step away from the keyboard, now!

Well done.

Writing is a team sport.

A two hour show and only two things you didn't like about it, not bad!

I really enjoyed the show and think Maconie always does justice the subject he is broadcasting about.

I do find it funny that when a Maconie-bashing post appears is always by a new poster! Still at least it wasn't 6MusicMessageboarder (or was it?)

Ian

if their opinions are so interesting why are they not being asked or paid to give them - and why do they get so upset when someone suggests that their blog is nothing more than peacock feathers.

..don't look now..but you're blogging.
..and it's a little more than a pidgeon feather.

...

..said that anyway, other than you? (in a massive feat of paraphrasing)

But no mention of Record Mirror? I freely admit I got RM as it was the only one of the UK's one-time four music weeklies which had that week's BMRB/Gallup charts. I always found it amusing when my NME/Sounds/Melody Maker-reading schoolmates derided Record Mirror as they saw it tucked under my arm, then invariably said "Gi's a look."

One other small grumble about the show... Stuart and Miranda didn't give a lot of time to the current state of the music press or its possible future, did they?

But overall, I was fascinated. And hats off for the kind words about The Word.

that our multiple personality poster comes from St Helens with the Maconie fatuation that he has.

The fact that he replies to himself twice earlier up the thread would seem to confirm this.

Johnny Vegas?

...is that anyone can put their opinion in writing. Whilst there are many wonderful, incisive, intelligent folk out there that wouldn't ordinarily get the chance to express their views in writing and, because of the internet, do, there are also quite a few halfwitted, clumsy individuals that really have no writing skill or, arguably, any place reviewing material. But they do. Because they can. I have regularly been reading reviews for about seven months now of something I'm involved in; and it's shocking how the vast majority of what I've read has been ill-informed, idiotic, contradictory, witless, poorly constructed and personally hurtful. From my own point of view, I have no problem with a bad review. But all the badly written ones are really starting to grate.

..are unqualified to write about their subject, mostly they just start as music fans. Within that parameter there are people like David Hepworth and Andrew Harrison, who bring taste wit and verve to the job.
Unfortunately, for every one of them, there are about twenty David Quanticks, whose writing I find deeply uninformed and not even (as it usually is intended to be) funny.

When I wanted to learn more about Sun Ra a few years ago the most incisive and interesting views I found were blogs on the internet.
Apart from CD notes and one biography, I'm not sure where else I could have accumulated so much information.
Certainly not from the music press.

I enjoyed Maconie and Miranda's show, made for a very interesting discussion. It was maybe unfortunate Maconie used the term 'vanity publishing' off the top of his head in relation to music blogs, albeit it was a quick reference at the very end of the programme.
There are loads of brilliant music/MP3 blogs that are as passionate, articulate and knowledgable as a lot of the stuff out there in print. While Miranda lamented that there is only a finite space in the broadsheets for pop coverage, there are no such limits online. While everyone misses Smash Hits, Popjustice is effectively a modern online reincarnation of it. There is also some briliant writing on websites like Quietus and Pitchfork, and forums like this one.
The Word apart, if you are looking for an escape from blanket coverage of the 'consensus culture' Rob Fitzpatrick wrote about the best place to rummage about is online.

it comes back like a bad rash. I thought hard about posting this because I didn't want to add fuel to the OP's very weak criticism of 10 minutes of an evening radio show. But... I don't think this is the place for these discussions to play out. I'm fed up with it - anyone who agrees with my point of view would be as well to add no further comment to this thread & let it die a natural death.

I hesitate to post this and push it back to the top of the list.

doh!