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Contact at verbalslapstick@googlemail.com. I promise that it works now. It turns out that a: I can't spell 'Slapstick,' and b: I'm rubbish at making new email addresses anyway. Should all be taken care of now.

Interlude: in which a favoured interest comes to an end, and the writer has a brief think

On September 11th one of my favourite things on the Internet, the webcomic Scarygoround, will come to an end. *EDIT* Obviously the delay in publishing this post means that it is ALREADY over. Head to the site to read the hundreds of comments from wellwishers and fans remarking on its end.

I know my ol’ pal Nash is a Scarygoround fan, which ought to tell you everything you need about its quality. Scarygoround describes the very funny, slightly macabre and proudly odd exploits of possibly insane English rose Shelly Winters, the lives and loves of her friends, and the adolescent adventures occurring at the local secondary school Tackleford Grammar. It has been on the links tab on this blog since I started doing it. It’s just to the right, just over there. Go on, off you go, I shall wait.

I’m not as upset as I might be because John Allison, the man responsible for Scarygoround (and its spiritual prequel Bobbins) will be starting a new project on the very same website. I am eager to see what the new direction entails. I have a lot of faith in Mr. Allison, as he has been making me happy (in a quiet sort of way) for a few years now.

Mr. Allison’s reasons for finishing the comic are ones I can broadly support. He believes, as do I, that nothing can be extended forever without becoming diluted- that returning time and again to the same characters, the same formulas, is bound to run them dry, and taint the memory of what made them special in the first place.

He also has issues of readership to worry about. Scarygoround is how Mr. Allison makes his living; selling prints, commissioned artwork and merchandise related to the comic. It is therefore in more than just his creative interest that people read his work. Only a small fraction of those who view the comic actually buy the stuff that is on offer, and so if Mr. Allison is to stay in caviar Toblerone’s and keep up the payments on his rocket car, he needs to keep the number of readers as high as he possibly can.

Web comics rarely generate a sustained amount of publicity. This is not to say that people who enjoy them lose interest, but simply that people tend to get on at the ground floor or not at all. For a long running comic like Scarygoround it can be difficult to convince new readers to start without alienating the old. In print comics (and here I refer to the funnybooks, not the 'every day' comics you find in newspapers) a lull in the narrative that allows new readers to get on board without a lot of prior knowledge is called a ‘jumping on point.’ Because most long running comic books change writers and artists all the time their readers are quite used to peaks and troughs in the story. They are also used to continuity flying all over the place.

Web comics, on the other hand, have less room to work with. It is hard for artists to keep writing in start points without getting on the nerves of established readers, especially when the narrative only moves forward in daily increments.

So John Allison is hoping that the fans from Scarygoround will stick with him through the change, and that the new project will provide an opportunity for some new people to ride the bus.

Reading his thoughts on the necessity of attracting new readership, I had a short think about my own. I rest under no illusions; I know full well that Verbal Slapstick attracts only a few readers, mostly saintly and perspicacious friends who are generous in their support. I am grateful for their interest in what is essentially a vanity project. So far this endeavour has filled all my wants- it gives me a chance to write a bit, and think a bit, and provides a small audience for some of my other writing. A couple of people have read the last short story I wrote, which increases my general circulation by, I think, 200%.

Do I want more people to read this? Of course I do. It’s lovely to think people like what I write (and by extension, me) enough to swing past this part of the interwebs with any regularity. But I’m not in a situation like John Allison, in which I rely on my readers to provide part of my income. There is no need for me to reach any more readers, save to massage my own ego.

On the other hand, it would be nice to have more people commenting on the blog, especially anyone with ideas on what to talk about next. Also, the more people look at Verbal Slapstick, the more free criticism I get for my other scribblings. So perhaps I might start plugging this blog a little more. Would anybody mind? And if not, could they suggest ways in which I might go about it?

Sorry for this sudden bout of introspection. If you feel like some whimsy instead, I strongly suggest you give Scarygoround a try. The fact that it’s reached its end should not put you off. In fact, it strikes me as the perfect time to begin.

"The literary tradition of anonymity goes back to the Bible." - Joe Klein

First, a disclaimer of sorts. I realise that I am coming to the argument discussed below a little late, and that all that is worth saying on the subject has almost certainly been said already. I'm piping up now because I have a question that I want to articulate (I'd like to get it answered too, but I doubt that will happen). I'm also a little tardy because I've been thinking hard about what I want to say here, and I think slow, sometimes.

Night Jack is no more. The anonymous blog maintained by a Lancashire police officer has been removed by its creator, the first blogger to win the Orwell Prize, after The Times 'outed' him earlier this month. His identity was revealed at the end of a court case against The Times, during which the officer was told by the judge that he could have "no reasonable expectation of privacy," because blogging is essentially a public activity instead of a private one. The whole story can be found here.

I hadn't heard of Night Jack's blog until I read about his revealing. I felt a little aggrieved when I discovered the blog had been removed, as I would have been interested to read it. I actually follow another blog about a policeman, The Johnny Law Chronicles, an anonymous account of an American military vet turned copper in a large but unnamed American city. It's pretty macho- Johnny Law is unafraid to break a few heads every now and then, but it provides an interesting perspective on policing that I'd honestly never encountered before. I'm a fairly liberal guy, and my lifestyle generally leads me to see the police as a threat rather than anything else, but it's nice to have my prejudices challenged sometimes. The style is direct but ironic, and so I occasionally find myself sympathising with Johnny as he maces some street punk. It would have been interesting to compare his stuff with a British bobby, and see what different issues come up, and what similarities.

Obviously now the chance is gone. As a blogger myself, I sympathise with the writer, but that doesn't mean I'm necessarily challenging the judges decision. Although I think it's a shame, the judge in question did raise some good points (specifically that it was not "part of the court's function to protect police officers who are, or think they may be, acting in breach of police discipline regulations from coming to the attention of superiors." Part of the reason Night Jack was blogging anonymously is because he knew he couldn't make his comments publicly without being reprimanded).

It's impossible to read all this without identifying similarities with another famous 'outing' of a blogger, again in The Times. Girlwithaonetrackmind was (and is) a sex blogger of some celebrity, whose identity was made public some time ago. Again, I don't wish to debate Girl's right to anonymity (although I would like to state that the conduct of The Times was discouragingly vulgar in this case). What I want to know is, why was her identity revealed?

It seems that there would be two sorts of people: those that had encountered girlwithaonetrackmind, and those that had not. I would posit that those who had some familiarity with Girl's blog would have an interest in her continued anonymity. It is easy to appreciate why she wanted to remain anonymous- she was posting about her sex life on the Internet. Those that enjoyed her blog were probably a bit saddened when her identity was made known, or were at least sympathetic. The other group of people are those who hadn't a clue there even was a blog called girlwithaonetrackmind. How, exactly would they be interested in her 'outing?' Someone they'd never heard of was revealed to be... (dun dun duuuunnnnnn) some else they'd never heard of. Extra! Extra! Reeeadalaboudit!

The situation with Night Jack is similar. He turned out to be a copper nobody had ever heard of. If an anonymous blogger is revealed, do they really become any less anonymous? They remain an unknown face in the crowd. Let's face it, we won't hear about them further in the print media. The 'outing' is the big deal, newspapers don't care about their further blogging.

So who actually gave a crap? How many members of Joe Public would have definitively said: "Yes, I really want to know the identity of such and such a blogger."

Why, then, is this considered newsworthy? I've got one reason, at least in Girl's case: she was (and is) blogging about SEX. In this country at least, anything remotely to do with SEX is considered news. She wasn't just a blogger, she was a SEX blogger, and that's what made it OK to put her mum's name in the article.

If that seems a little childish, don't worry, because it really is. Putting the word SEX in the title of a story shouldn't guarantee interest, but it does, even for me. Attitudes towards sexual relations in this country have made any mention of them feel faintly illicit, and anything illicit is interesting. That doesn't mean the news story actually has any merit to it.

The point I'm making (in a slightly roundabout way) is that journalism is supposed to relate to either what people want to read about, or what, in the journalist's opinion, they ought to read about. Does 'outing' an anonymous blogger really count as either? Or are the newspapers making their own 'news,' and expecting us to like it? This is no a blanket comment- I'm using the blogging thing as a specific example. Plenty of people want to know about Katie and Peters' relationship, and that's cool with me. But there seems to be a fair few news stories that pander to no-ones' interest, and moreover, have no real positive reason for existing, other than to fill up space (and in the case of girlwithoneonetrackmind, let's be honest, letting a young freelance journalist get her foot in the door).

If we allow the newspapers to print anything and class it as news, then the quality of journalism in general can only suffer. What exactly we ought to do about this I'm sure I don't know. But we could start with writing a letter or two- not to criticise a story on its moral grounds (although sure, you could do that if you feel like it), but to demonstrate when you do not believe it is worth reading about. Journalists might have to work a bit harder (or crowbar SEX into more articles), but we'd have more information that is relevant or instructive, rather than something transient- who among those whose first encounter with Night Jack was the article in the newspaper can remember what his name was now?

If any of you lovely people has an opinion on this it'd be a pleasure to read it. Also, links to any other articles that discuss the points I've made would be appreciated. Ta.

*Edit. Some people have already commented on this blog post, and have expressed some interesting opinions. I'm just letting you know as I don't get a lot of comments so I doubt many people check them.