No Respect, I Tells Ya! Bloggers Get No Repect!
Okay, as promised, some blogging about all the blog-whining (or "blining," to use a word I just invented) about recent media pieces about blogging.
As you know, it started with the NY Times Mag feature article on bloggers. The Times piece was interesting (although kind of long), but it aroused a lot of bitterness because it didn't invite everybody to its birthday party. But here are my favorite bits from it:
I had talked to [Mickey] Kaus earlier in the summer at a restaurant in Venice, Calif., and he had said he didn't know how much longer he could stand it. After the election, he said, he might just give up. Once, he told me, ''I was halfway across the room about to blog a dream I just had, without ever regaining consciousness, before I realized what I was about to do. If the computer hadn't been in the other room, I probably would have.''
You know, I'm pretty sure that Kaus often blogs without regaining consciousness. That would explain so much.
Glenn Reynolds, a conservative law professor whose blog, Instapundit, is read faithfully at the White House.
Indeed.
Seriously, that doesn't surprise me a bit. It seems like just the kind of thing that this White House would read.
Left-wing politics are thriving on blogs the way Rush Limbaugh has dominated talk radio, and in the last six months, the angrier, nastier partisan blogs have been growing the fastest.
Starting next week, World o'Crap will change its name to "World O'#$%^, You *+^&$s!!!"
"Other bloggers don't consider me a real blogger,'' she [Ana Marie Cox] said. ''Kos is the platonic ideal of a blogger: he posts all the time; he interacts with his readers.'' She swallowed an oyster and smiled. ''I hate all that.''
Yeah, posting and interacting are the hidden downsides of blogging. And while Ana Marie isn't a real blogger (Wonkette is like the Menudo of blogs), she is more of a real blogger than Kaus, who is the Slim Whitman of bloggers.
Since February, with the explosion of blog traffic and the invention of blog ads as a revenue source, a few elite bloggers have found themselves on the receiving end of a Howitzer of money, as much as $10,000 a month.
Geez Louise! While I wouldn't sell out for the $50 a month which Sadly, No! cited, I would sell out (both me and Sadly) for $10,000 a month. Somebody offer it to me and see. (Say, what bloggers do you think get money like that? Because we should hit them up for drinks!)
Anyway, the piece goes on to tell you a lot about Wonkette, DailyKos, and Talking Points Memo, all fine blogs, and all written by interesting people. But because none of them are members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders® (a registered trademark of TBogg, who uses his $10,000 a month to buy bassets), there was that blining I mentioned earlier.
For instance, here's Lileks:
But I did want to say something about that silly NYT piece about blogging. All I needed to know I learned from the cover. Doing a story on blogging and putting Wonkette on the cover is like using Janine Garafalo to illustrate a story about the power of talk radio. Sure, Limbaugh has better numbers, but what’s more compelling? A story about someone who attracts 20 million uninteresting people, or someone who attracts 100,000 people who are Just Like Us?
So, if you want to write about bloggers who covered the Democratic and Republican conventions, you HAVE to write about InstaPundit, or your piece is bogus.
Oh, and per Truth Laid Bear, DailyKos gets MORE hits than Instapundit, and Wonkette gets more than ScrappleFace, Kim du Toit, Redstate, and Belmont Club put together. So, sorry, Lileks, but those liberal blogs are both better AND more popular than the people who are Just Like You.
But, per Lileks, the story SHOULD have been about the war bloggers, even though it was about the bloggers at the conventions, because the War Bloggers recently discovered the Unified Field Theory of Physics by questioning the CBS memos.
It’s amusing to learn that the author interviewed Charles [of LittleGreenSnotballs] for 45 minutes, and declined to sully his article with any quotes from the fellow who helped disprove the memo. It’s like writing a story about the Enigma decrypts and spending most of your time on a fashion critic who wrote bitchy assessments of the clothing worn by the women who typed in the intel.
Yeah! And it's also like if you wrote a story about the Marshall Plan and failed to mention that the film "My Japan" helped to win W.W.II by being racist!
Anyway: I didn’t really care what the author said, because I don’t have the reverential attitude towards the Sunday Mag I used to have.
Because it didn't invite him to its party.
The article gave Hugh Hewitt a wedgie too. And for basically the same reasons: it didn't mention him. And, as we learned last week, he knows so much about blogging that he is writing a book about it -- and he needs your help to do it.
What is happening is an Information Reformation which is why last week my publisher and I settled on the title of my new book due in January: "BLOG: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World."
Later:
And the next day:
Unless there is big news, I won't be posting this weekend, as the book deadline requires attention. But I would like your input: How has the blogosphere changed your life? I am not looking for commentaries on changes to "deep structures" or other such things. I'd like to know how many hours you spend at the computer, the changes to your travel plans, how you buy books etc. Responses welcome via hugh@hughhewitt.com.
So, the NY Times should listen to him, because he knows so much about what idiots do online.
Anyway, on to his gripes about their piece which didn't mention him:
Rarely has an institution gone to such great lengths to confirm its own bias and validate its increasing irrelevance as the New York Times does this morning in the almost unbelievably unbalanced New York Times Magazine piece on the blogosphere. The responses at Allah, LittleGreenFootballs, and Ace of Spades are fine jumping off points for a scorecard on the article's absurdities, and Betsy'sPage is keeping track of the responses from the center-right of the blogosphere.[...]This piece is what the lawyers call "an admission against interest" combined with an undeniable expression of liberal bias in MSM. The admission is that the blogosphere matters a lot. The expression of bias is the incredible series of whopping omissions in the coverage. This is MSM's attempt --and there will be many more-- to "credential" some of their favorites in the blogosphere, thus elevating them and hopefully their readership. How can you be surprised that the way left Times profiles way left bloggers for their way left audience to hopefully bookmark and consult as a sort of internet annex to the still dominant New York Times?
So, Wonkette (who has no readers), is also "way left." And the Times only profiled her because she's one of its favorites -- which must mean that she's sleeping with it.
Anyway, Hugh, because he's a world-renowned expert on blogging, found, via Instapundit, this Newsweek column which calls on bloggers to shape up before they try to take the mote out of the mainstream media's eye. Here's a sample from it.
True, there are indeed constructive, thoughtful Web-log commentators online. But they don't draw crowds like Glenn Reynolds, whose Instapundit site recently peaked at about 445,000 daily page views.[...]What went wrong? In part, it's the same reason that traditional media sometimes fall short on their civic duty: the low road is a well-trodden path to big readership. "In the blog world, people gravitate toward subjects that generate traffic," says Gillmor. "The more raucous you are, the more page views you get." Also, while Big Media must answer for any missteps or favoritisms, bloggers seldom do.
Because this author didn't say that conservative bloggers are the best thing ever (and because he disses InstaGlenn, everybody's favorite), the 101st Fighting Keyboarders raced to denounce it, so that Glenn would link to their blogs. Hugh predictably joined in.
I don't know who Steven Levy is, and have never seen a column by him before.
You know, admitting one's ignorance like that is kind of a stupid way to gain street creds. I mean, even I know that Levy is Newsweek's weekly technology columnist. And if you take two seconds to do a Google search, your first hit will be Levy's homepage. From it, you will learn that Steven Levy is a:
Journalist. Author. Aficionado of high tech goodies.
Interviewer of scientists, hackers, suits, and wonks.
Collector of lunch boxes from the sixties.
Plus, he's written at least five books. So, saying that you don't know who he is and have never read one of his columns doesn't buy you as much credibility as you might think, Hugh. (Plus, those lunch boxes are cool.)
Anyway, let's skip to where Hugh defends Glenn's honor:
"True, there are indeed constructive, thoughtful Web-log commentators online. But they don't draw crowds like Glenn Reynolds."yeah, I guess that nanotechnology stuff is really rabid partisanship run wild.
If nanotechnology was all that Glenn wrote about, nobody would have ever heard of him (and the world would be a better place).
Oh, that's not what's bothering him? "[Renolds] relentlessly flogged the question of whether John Kerry's boat was actually in Cambodian waters on Christmas Eve, 1968, as the candidate claimed."This is unglued on two fronts. "Relentlessly" would be, well, relentless, right? But you go find the most recent post by Glenn on the subject. I couldn't do so.
Hugh, if you want to be a blogger, you HAVE to learn how to use a search engine (and you have to stop making everybody else do your work for you). Oh, and Instapundit has a search function, so it's not like you'd even have to leave the nest, Hugh. It shows that Glenn last posted about Kerry in Cambodia on September 20th. That seems pretty relentless to me, since the story first broke weeks ago. Are you SURE Glenn is going to appreciate you bringing this up, Hugh?
More to the point, Levy is apparently ok with a serial fantasizer as Commander-in-Chief. That's his choice. But it is a legitimate, and apparently majoritarian point of view, to be disturbed by "seared, seared" memories that didn't occur. Levy's belief in the superiority of his own point of view --as opposed to an argument as to why his point of view is superior-- is another giveaway of an elitist --in attitude if not accomplishment-- uncomfortable with the hard business of persuasion. Authoritarian hierarchies are so much easier to deal with.
Levy's point was that Glenn used to write about stuff that mattered, but now he writes about stupid partisan stuff, because that's what his fan-boys are interested in. I think you've made his case for him, Hugh.
Then this:"In his book 'We the Media,' San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor claimed that blogs could enable 'the rise of the citizen journalist.' Bloggers, he said, had the power to mitigate the tyranny of media giants who no longer serve the needs of the people. But when I called Gillmor last week to ask what he thought of the invectives, partisanship and fixation on ultimately trivial issues in the face of a crucial election, there was a long silence before he said, 'I'm not going to disagree.'"Look, maybe Gillmor just didn't want to deal with a bonehead, and if the question was put that way --"invectives, partisanship and fixation on ultimately trivial issues"-- why bother answering? Levy didn't call to get an opinion. He called for the columnist's equivalent of comfort food. Geez, don't they have editors at Newsweek? "Hey, Levy," a real editor might have asked, "why don't you call someone who will hand you your head on a plate? Try those Powerline guys. They made short work of arrogance in suspenders when Boyd tried this tripe."
Hugh, for your book, why don't YOU call someone who will hand you your head on a plate (or at least somebody who will show you how to use a search engine)? Or don't they have editors at Thomas Nelson Christian Products?
There's no bitterness in the conclusion that "the Blogosphere is looking more and more like a nation of ankle-biters," is there? Alan Nelson, who I was pleased to blog alongside of at both the DNC and RNC
Oh, so Hugh blogged at both of the conventions, and yet HE wasn't profiled by the NY Times! Now it all makes sense! I guess Hugh knows a thing or about bitterness.
...which I am glad he overheard and reproduced:"While at the DNC Hewitt and I were entertaining some MSM reporter types up in Bloggers’ Roost when Hugh so succinctly summarized the tenor Klam projects:MSM Reporter: “How do you explain the way the mainstream press is treating bloggers?”Hewitt: “I understand jealousy.”
Yeah, Hugh does understand jealousy, all right.
A final point. In a column complaining about snarkiness, what's with the "ankle-biter stuff"? It is lame as invective, but it is invective nonetheless. Are we to think that invective, like accuracy, is reserved for the old elites? Inaccuracy, hypocrisy and jealousy, all in one column.
Yes, we bloggers do do snarkiness better than the old elites. I think Hugh has a valid point here.
Oh, and Hugh is also right about how he managed to combine inaccuracy, hypocrisy, and jealousy all in one column. Way to go, Hugh!
Well, I'm tired and my head hurts (I blame "CSI: Miami"), so that's all the blining I can cope with right now. I'll try to make it up to you by declaring Thursday "Sex Day" (it can be part of our plan to get away from those pagan Norse names for the days of the week). It will follow TownhallDay. Get your antibiotics now.
3:31:52 AM
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