Savage reader reaction to an innocent travel blog has opened an energetic debate about the merits of the blogosphere, writes Jonathan Este. Cartoon by Matt Golding.

One young man who probably won’t be following his father into journalism is Max Gogarty. The 19-year-old Londoner, who is probably deep into his umpteenth Singha Beer as you are reading this, copped a savaging after being hired to write a travel blog by Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

Thousands of disgruntled posters poured bile onto the paper’s site damning his writing skill, his upbringing, his education and his attitudes.

Facebook groups were set up to mock his single blog post. His name can be found on Wikipedia as an example of nepotism (alongside George W Bush and Saddam Hussein’s sons). In what is becoming increasingly common Web2.0 parlance, Gogarty was flamed to within an inch of his life.

Like the unfortunate Clare Swires, whose private comment to her boyfriend about oral sex (“Yours was yum!”) was read by millions worldwide, Gogarty has become a discussion point for textbook studies about internet discourse.
It may be unfortunate that this happened to a young bloke who, by all accounts – and there have now been a few of them – is a thoroughly amiable and intelligent gap year student whose writing skill had already attracted attention. His work at his state school had earned him an invitation to attend a writers’ workshop at the Royal Court Theatre in London and he had been commissioned as an occasional scriptwriter for the Channel Four interactive television show, Skins.

His initial post was unremarkable, referring as it did to his intention to scoot around India and Thailand for a few months, hopefully gaining some cultural insight but also catching up with his travelling friends and getting in a few full moon parties.

But within minutes of posting, there were ominous rumbles from the blogosphere: “Posh 19-year-old goes to Thailand to find himself amongst all the other ‘gappers’, and we can follow his every move? Wow,” was post number three, while number four wrote: “Whose son is Max then? Terrible, terrible, shame on you, Guardian.”

Soon someone had Googled Gogarty and come up with the fact that his father, Paul, writes for the Guardian. And from there it all pretty much went downhill like a drunken game of Chinese whispers at a party for the hard of hearing. Informed debate? Not a bit of it.

As what his father subsequently identified as a “tsunami of hate” washed over the Guardian’s Comment is Free site, Max went from being a “posh kid” (he comes from North London) to being private school educated, the son of the Guardian’s travel editor. His gap year travels, speculated some, were being paid for by the newspaper. None of which was true.

“Oh Christ, this guy’s going to get an absolute hammering. CiF commissioning editors, you are cruel, cruel beasts,” added one poster, who anticipated the way the conversation would eventually veer – tired of ripping Gogarty to shreds, the mob turned on the Guardian itself.

In the end the saga prompted several supplementary pieces on the Guardian’s website: a reply by the newspaper’s travel editor establishing how he came to select the young writer; an analysis by Emily Bell, the director of digital content at Guardian News and Media, who admitted the whole thing might not have been a good idea; and a weekend feature which quoted the young writer’s dad at length: “Max won’t be writing any more blogs, I thought I’d bring all those heroic internet warriors the good news. Max’s trip (which he paid for himself I’m afraid - sorry) has got off to the worst possible start and he’s feeling pretty grim. You may like or dislike the blog, but the cruelty is shocking, if quintessentially British.”

Comment is Free has won the Guardian multiple awards. It boasts hundreds of writers across a huge range of interests and disciplines, and has a devoted and energetic community of readers/posters. But, as the media writer Rafael Behr noted in The Observer (the Guardian’s sister Sunday paper): “There is no such thing as an online community … blogs, Facebook, MySpace – the whole apparatus of web social interaction – make up a network that facilitates communication. The network itself is amoral. Despite the utopian claims made on behalf of the internet, mainly based on the fact that it is good for free speech, there is nothing humane or virtuous about a set of computer connections.”

This in turn kicked off its own debate. And here’s the interesting point, rather than being – as one poster insisted – “Islington talking to Hampstead”, the CiF site truly became the conversation that web evangelists have so often forecast as its valuable role. Suddenly most of the running was being made “below the line” rather than descending from something being written by a paid journalist above the line.

The truth is there are communities and communities. The Guardian is confident enough to allow posters to comment directly onto its site (they are moderated after posting to remove potential defamation, apparently depending on the legal defence that the newspaper has done everything it can to avoid such situations).

By contrast, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph screens all posts before they appear on the site. Which is just as well, because – according to an op-ed piece by Fiona Connolly – it would appear the level of discourse in its “online community” – or at least that rarified group with interest in either sport or celebrity, “Pup” Clarke and Lara Bingle – makes for less than edifying reading. Who would have thought it?

Jonathan Este has worked for The Australian and The Independent in the UK and now works for the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance.

Matt Golding is a Walkley-winning cartoonist; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .