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'Our future has to be a "joint operation"'

Rick Waghorn is the founder of MyFootballWriter.com. This is an edited version of a post on his blog, Out With a Bang. The full version can be read at this link.

The lesson comes from the streets of Baghdad. That our future has to be a 'joint operation'; you need grunts on the ground, you win no hearts and few minds with just drones in the air.

Apologies if the analogy proves over-stretched.

Whilst there might be a forest fire of our worst imaginings raging all about us right now in old media land, it bears no comparison to events elsewhere in the world - notably, in this case, the conflicts that continue to engulf the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Anyway, the point about mentioning conflicts comes with regard to how they are currently being resolved; and, in particular, the strategy that General David Patreaus brought to bear on the failing US military mission in Iraq.

Because, it is fascinating when you put it into our own, current, upside-down media world.

Patreaus' thinking - in part, at least - is all about putting boots on the ground; that to win a counter-insurgency struggle, you're going to have to get in people's faces; win their hearts and minds by actually being on their very doorstep - and knocking before you go in…

That this was the lesson from Vietnam: you win nothing from the air; you have to put boots on the ground.

Simply applying the latest piece of stealth hardware or box of military technology will not overawe a restless populace.

You have to get in among them; make your presence felt at street-level; get a grunt on the corner of EveryBlock.

History has taught us that defeating an insurgent rebellion is done by getting out of a tank; not staying inside one. Nor - Google - is it done by sending a blacked up Merc with a rotating camera on top down through the streets of a sleepy Buckinghamshire village.

Technology can't do it alone. You've got to put some old-fashioned flesh out there where the metal meets the meat.

Because I don't do data - never have. And I don't do tecchie - not my thing.

I do people. Faces. Local reporters with a name and a face and a way of communicating with the communities they serve and inform. I like flesh. Always have.

I don't want another clever map. I know where Arsenal play their home games. I want a football reporter in a press box. And if he needs a clever map to get there, he shouldn't be in the job.

I want to see faces, not data: Mrs Biggs on Bowthorpe Council Estate doesn't do data. Never will.

And that's why EveryBlock cries out for a cherry on top - a reporting grunt on the corner of that block to win hearts and minds of that community; to get out there and make contact. And once a contact is made, so you get original content…

You don't get original content from an unmarked, aggregating drone flying high above the streets of EveryBlock. You get it by being a boot on the ground; a foot in the door.

But here's the interesting bit that events in both Afghanistan and Iraq have taught the military: that if we can apply the best of the new technology to the best of our boots-on-the-ground philosophy, then we can start to turn the tide back in our favour.

It's far more expensive to put a grunt on the corner of EveryBlock than it is to put a whizzy new drone-type toy into the air and marvel at the lovely video shots it produces.

But if said drone is married effectively to the grunt on the ground, then they can achieve far greater results, achieve far greater levels of efficiency, because - for example - now you have an UGC [user-generated content] Twitter feed directing you instantly to the near fatal RTA [road traffic accident] on the A140; as opposed to waiting four hours to pick it up off police calls.

It's 'joint operations'; it's not one or the other - it's both.

But from where I sit, this is the real, real danger - that people are forgetting about investing in the grunts on the ground and thinking that technology can win this particular war.

The answer is not going to come out of a Guardian IT dept.

What will come out of a Guardian IT dept is better tools to arm the grunts on the block; to give the boots on the ground a better 'situational awareness' so they can manage their time and resources better.

Right now, I see no one funding the future of grunts. I see people obsessed with technology, with kit, with maps, with steet-views, with timelines and charts.

But to win this war it has to be a 'joint operation'; you win hearts and minds - win people back to engaging with a new media world - by pressing flesh, putting a face to data, by putting boots on the ground.

Someone needs to start thinking more about funding models for grunts on the ground and less about directing all that's left of this nation's dwindling digital resources on delivering yet more drones in the air.

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