Federal Parliament resumes in a fortnight. Are you looking forward to it? Can't wait to tune in for question time? Hanging out for an election this year?

As a journalist for more than 20 years, and an editor for seven, I'm surprised at how much I'm dreading it. Already, press gallery journalists have pronounced that politics will be more bitter, more personal, more toxic this year and that - groan - the election will be about "trust and character".

Well, what if it wasn't? Specifically, what if the media decided it wasn't going to be? The 2010 election - "Real Julia", a gate-crashing Mark Latham, Tony Abbott's "stop the boats!" - was pilloried by politicians and journalists as the most woeful in memory. Journalists complained about the politicians, but this time the rise of online commentary meant that feedback about our own performance was out of our control.

Two weeks into the campaign, blogger Greg Jericho was listening to Abbott announce the Liberals' disability education policy. As he recounts in his book, The Rise of the Fifth Estate, as a father of a daughter with Down syndrome, he - and presumably others affected by disability - was interested and, "like a naive fool", waited for questions. But reporters asked nothing at all about the policy, instead grilling Abbott on whether he believed Latham when he accused Kevin Rudd of leaking to Channel Nine's Laurie Oakes.

A frustrated Jericho blogged that news directors should "bring home your journalists'' because they were wasting money and delivering little. He still thinks that if you weigh up who was most at fault for that campaign - the politicians or the media - "a greater level of blame should be directed towards the media".