Michael Williams: Readers' editor

Bloggers. Dontcha hate 'em? You can just imagine them out there – in some grungy internet café, consumed with bile, prejudice and misinformation, drinking from a scummy coffee cup. One thing they won't be drinking from is any kind of fount of wisdom. And as for the 'Oxford English Dictionary', doubt if they've ever heard of it. Citizen journalists? Pah! How dare they compare themselves with pukka representatives of the Fourth Estate, with their years of training, unswerving devotion to the truth, total lack of bias, and staunch regard for journalistic codes of ethics?

At least, that's the view of many mainstream journalists still, despite the fact that the media landscape has changed almost totally in the past two decades. As a readers' editor who consumes blogs for a living, you'd expect me to take the opposite view – and I do. No longer are blogs merely – as one former editor of 'The Independent' once put it – "the din of small voices". The best of them now rival Fleet Street's finest. So here are half-a-dozen reasons for all you bloggers to be cheerful:

1) Blogs are good at digging. I've recently been helping to judge the British Press Awards – the "Oscars" of national newspapers – and while there's some good investigative journalism out there, it's a shame that Matt Drudge can't enter.

2) Blogs are spontaneous. While I'm a big fan of John Rentoul's elegantly crafted column in this newspaper, I like him even better when he gets up in the morning and feels the need to blog in the 'Independent' website's Open House section. And how many of Jeremy Paxman's 'Newsnights' from the past year can you remember, compared with his blog rant against M&S underpants?

3) The best blogs have more transparency. Would the 'Daily Express' have got away with made-up material about the McCann family for so long if it had been forced to provide links to its sources of information?

4) Blogs are tops for political coverage. It may have been "'The Sun' wot won it", but at Westminster, they're all reading Guido Fawkes. And the hotshot issues around Clinton and Obama are to be found in blog world, not in the Jurassic Park world of NBC or the 'Washington Post'.

5) Blogs tell it like it is. I'd rather read "Underground Dave" on Ken Livingstone's achievements than anything you'll find on the Mayor's Office website.

You're entitled to disagree, of course. A new book by the critic Lee Siegel, one of America's leading bloggers, argues that the internet has cheapened the quality of public discourse. This is partly true. Some of the most abusive missives I get arrive anonymously via the 'IoS' blogs rather than through the politer medium of the readers' editor mailbox. But I don't mind – honestly. And after months of being unpleasant to me, two of my grumpiest regulars have started to be nice to each other. Spring must be in the air.

Message Board: Should we send refugees back to Zimbabwe?

Government plans to expel asylum-seekers who will be at risk under Mugabe's regime was both supported and condemned by our bloggers:

graham casey

The UK for far too long has been the soft touch at the expense of its long-suffering taxpayers. Everyone knows it and that's why there are waiting lists on the French coast for lorries.

Lucy Norman

Asylum-seekers want to work. They don't come here for handouts. The fact they can't is not their fault and doesn't alter the circumstances which made them flee their own countries in the first place.

Flipped

If anyone thinks it's harsh now just wait until they start flooding into southern Europe in a decade or two. We'll see many Britons who went to Spain wanting to return.

Jas

For decades Western oil companies have paid the leaders and given little to the locals. Not satisfied with their unconscionable profits they have now taken to murdering locals who develop alternative fuels.

Anglo Saxon

Most Zimbabweans believe that they will go back to their country if human rights improve. They do not want to spent the rest of their lives in foreign lands, unprepared for the hostility they met in the UK.

Neil Murphy

Brown's government has no moral status. It is sending back an Iranian lesbian to Iran to be executed; they want to send the Zimbabweans back and to refuse entry to Iraqis who have served in our forces.

Therapist

I am a counsellor and one of my clients is a Zimbabwean asylum-seeker. She has suffered constant rape and torture over 20 years by her husband, and if she were sent back, she would definitely be killed.

MJ

We need some controls. But we must never send people back to any country where their life is at risk. Anybody who follows current affairs knows Zimbabwe will never be safe while Mugabe is in power.

To have your say on this or any other issue visit www.independent.co.uk/IoSblogs

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